


The Courser and the Wolf

by Enda



Series: Florae [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:48:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 29,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27813307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enda/pseuds/Enda
Summary: Unseen and altered scenes between Solas and the Inquisitor. Stolen moments, secret glances, budding tensions. A battle of wills that grows into so much more.And, of course—heartbreak.But not without some sweetness first.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Series: Florae [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2080824
Comments: 96
Kudos: 60





	1. Blood Lotus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re-post of a work I started and abandoned in 2017. Reposting what I've already wrote, as well as adding new chapters, inspired by a recent playthrough of Inquisiton. I finished with even greater appreciation for the team's writing - such a masterful story with so many layers around power, rebellion, and change.
> 
> This fic is light on smut (prob won't be much, when it finally comes) and is more based on UST and (hopefully) poignant character studies. I feel like a lot of fic either paints Solas as some kind of emo sex god or else as a cuddly and sweet lover. He's very sweet once the romance gets going in Inquisition - but always with reserve. It's hard for me to imagine they even slept together at all, if not for his comment about how getting the Inquisitor into bed was an enjoyable side benefit.
> 
> I'm more interested in exploring him as a very reserved (possibly celibate, lol, do I have a celibacy kink?) lover. Oh, and of course, still emo af.
> 
> With a very prickly Inquisitor with parallels to him in some ways. Definitely will be antagonistic for a while here as they get to know one another - my fave.
> 
> Will be drabbly, lots of dialogue and character study, less heavy on action.
> 
> So if you're into all that... read on! 
> 
> Note about the Inquisitor's name: On my most recent playthrough, I named her Halani - Elven (apparently) for "help." I thought it was fitting, given her overall role as Inquisitor as well as her (hopeful) role in Solas's life.
> 
> Also should add: Heavily indebted to KeeperLavellan and Feynite for some of these visuals - I've forgotten most of those fics but I know they have absorbed into my headcanon! We will also have a hot spring scene here but very different from Apotheosis, ha, given the reserve of both our leads here.
> 
> (New stuff begins chapter 9 - the backstory is maybe a bit important chap 1-8 but in retrospect the writing style is a bit heavier than what I ended up landing on when I returned to writing this fic. So if you want a bit more lightness, maybe begin later in the work.)

He is the last person she thought would notice her nighttime wanderings.

Halani knows, of course, that the _others_ are tracking her movements. The Seeker hardly bothers to hide her suspicion. Commander Cullen, too. Ambassador Josephine may curtsy, and titter, but the smile never touches her eyes. And Varric seems the sort to keep track of everyone, just to be sure he isn't surprised by anything.

And, of course, their _actual_ spymaster is watching her movements day and night. Of that she has no doubt.

But Solas is different.

Unlike the others, he is not unnerved by the mark on her hand and its strange power. Intrigued, certainly. Investigative. Intent. But the few times they'd spoken, he discussed the horror of the past week in the light tones of someone remarking upon the weather. She had almost thought him a bit addled because of it, were it not for his gaze, keen as a silverite dagger.

Even when he grabbed her wrist, held it up to the rift, and showed her how to seal it, he barely looked her in the eye. Now, when he does address her, it is inevitably to inquire after the state of the Mark. She gets the impression that he sees her as more of a walking magical puzzle than as a person. From the brief remarks he made about the Fade and spirits, mundane matters are beneath his notice. He seems about as likely to spy on her as he would spy on a nug.

So she is shocked when she slips from her hut, crosses the twilit lake, climbs up the steep bank into the woods, and finds him warming his hands at the firepit she’d constructed the night before.

“I took the liberty of starting a fire,” Solas says. “I hope you do not mind.”

Halani had planned to spend the evening in silent prayer to Dirthamen. She hasn't done it in months, but she had hoped it would bring her some comfort in this strange, terrifying new world she has found herself in. Now, it seems she will be forced to have yet another stilted conversation with someone who doesn't trust her.

Still, her curiosity outweighs her irritation. This is the first time they’ve spoken alone.

“I am glad for the company,” she says.

“Is that so?” He smiles to himself as he places more brush in the fire. “It seems to me you came here to escape it.”

Before she can protest, he continues: “Regardless. I ask for but a moment of your time.”

Solas crouches down on the opposite side of the firepit, and she gestures, palm-up, in an invitation for him to continue.

The sky is truly dark now, and the flames burn bright spots in her vision.

When he finally speaks, it is addressed to the sputtering fire and not to her.

“The Chosen of Andraste. A blessed hero to save us all.” She scans his face. No sign of amusement, only contemplation.

“You don’t believe that,” she says.

“And why not?” he replies, glancing up at her. “It seems to be the general consensus. The Seeker wouldn’t have formed the Inquisition for anything less.”

“Well, that’s exactly it. Times are… uncertain. Of course they’re looking for something to give this all a purpose.”

“That is a logical view of it. Do you not believe in the Maker and Andraste because you are Dalish?”

She stares into the fire. A simple _yes_ would be easy. But it isn’t quite true.

“I’m not sure what to believe, to be honest. Why does it matter?” She means to be flippant, but it comes out defensive.

Just as she noticed when he showed her how to seal the rift, he speaks to her as if she is an object, a tool, an instrument. He is a blacksmith examining the blade. Gauging its heft. Testing its edge.

“Every great war has its heroes,” he says. “I’m just curious what kind you’ll be.”

She meets his eyes above the fire, and her skin prickles as if someone has run a fingernail down her spine.

Her breath catches in her throat, the premonition dropping like a heavy stone into the very center of her: _There is suffering ahead. And it will be great._

“I’m no hero,” she says, and her whole body feels numb.

“And yet _they_ ,” Solas tilts his head towards Haven, “believe you are. Which version will survive as the truth, I wonder?”

“I’m not so sure they do.”

“Oh?”

At first, she had taken the others’ stiltedness as a measure of respect, after she closed the rift in the Temple and less people were calling her a murderer and more began whispering about Andraste. But then she noticed the way the residents of Haven fell silent as she approached, and drew the sun of the Maker on their chests when they thought she couldn’t see.

“They’re afraid of me.” She lifts her left hand, turning it in the light. “Yes, I have power, but having power doesn’t make me a hero. No more than owning a staff would make me a mage.”

“You may be surprised. Chantry bureaucrats denounce you as a heretic. Others laud you as a savior. Both claims are baseless, as you have done nothing besides close a few rifts, which almost anyone in your position would do. And yet, the stories of your heroism they’re telling even now...”

She massages her left hand, pondering his words.

“That’s not exactly inspiring,” she says.

“Isn’t it? Many would kill the Divine ten times over to possess the power you have.”

She glances at him, wondering if he is implicating her in the Divine’s murder. But he speaks lightly. Theoretically.

“I fail to see how the ability to close rifts is an incredible power,” she says. “It’s quite… specific, isn’t it? It’s not as if I can raise armies of the dead like a Tevinter magister, or force others to bow to my will.”

“That’s a very limited definition of power. Though I think you’ll find that soon you’ll be able to raise armies and bend others to your will, all the same.”

At that, she laughs aloud. And once she starts, it is impossible to stop. It keeps coming out of her in spurts and stutters, like blood from a deep wound.

“Is it so impossible to imagine?” he retorts, his tone sharpening. “You’d be surprised how easily loyalty is won, when there is an unknown threat and you are the only one who has the power to defeat it.”

“The Inquisition seems far more like a ragtag band of castoffs than the mighty force of old.” She frowns, the urge to laugh dying in her throat. “But I take your point. Perhaps it’s only because I do not want to imagine it.”

“Ah,” he says, satisfied, as if he has arrived at the solution to a riddle. “You dislike wielding power, then.”

She thinks of the isolation of her childhood, how she’d held her pride close like a handmade knife. She believed herself better than the other children her age, and chose the company of the Keeper instead. In those days, all she had craved was power, power to put her above the rest and prove that she was no outcast, the child of dead flat-ears, and taken in by charity.

But Keeper Deshanna had pulled that weed early. After Halani had challenged her rival Morenin to a duel, and defeated her so soundly, in such a humiliating fashion, that Morenin wept for days, the Keeper took her to Wycome and showed her the alienage. They watched from the shadows as the elves skulked by, cringing at the sight of city guards.

_You want a taste of power, Halani? These humans are powerful. Learn to hate the kind of power that relies on the subjugation of others._

And then later, once they were back at the camp: _Hone your skills and polish your weapons. That is right and proper. But use them for the good of the clan, our gods, and the People._

_Not for yourself._

She had been thirteen. Now she is twenty-three, and she’s spent every year since relearning that lesson. She knows she has changed, because Enan likes her now, when before she could hardly stand her. And even if the rest will never quite see her as one of them, kinless as she is, they respect her ability to hunt and her skill with the blade. They would not have voted to allow her to receive her vallaslin otherwise.

“Power itself is neither good nor bad,” she finally says to Solas. “It is a tool. If I am to have power, I would like to use it to win respect. Not fear.”

He is silent for a moment, watching the fire. “An admirable goal. But how does one go about gaining respect, without the according fear? From what I’ve observed, power creates fear just as surely as the sun creates warmth. No matter how nobly one wields it.”

She thinks of the way she changed her behavior in the clan. Staying silent to let others speak. Bringing gifts of wildflowers and food to the elders. Teaching her skills to the younger ones. Avoiding arguments and competition. Learning to yield when before she would have thrashed against anything in her way. Even her fighting style had changed. In skirmishes and hunts, she’d been wild and impulsive, wasting energy on showing off. Now, she is precise, refined, and brutally efficient.

“A good question,” she says, “and one I’m hardly wise enough to answer. But I think... Generosity and compassion. Fairness, which is really just another word for consistency.” She thinks of Keeper Deshalla’s lesson.

“And—humility.”

She remembers, a heartbeat later, that his name means _Pride_.

She expects him to pick apart her logic. After all, compassion often comes into conflict with fairness. And she has no experience of war. Keeper Deshalla led the clan in peacetime. Halani’s duties will be far different. Even now, she faces enemies from all sides, as well as the scrutiny of the entire world.

But if he thinks any of these objections, he voices none of them, and is silent for a very long time.

She thinks the conversation is over.

Then, he murmurs: “It will be interesting to watch this fledgling Inquisition make its way. I will stay to see it, for now.”

Just as she suspected, the whole conversation had been a test. Apparently, she passed.

“Was that in doubt?” she asks, even though she knows the answer.

Solas looks at her askance, and a wry smile twists his mouth. “I am an apostate. Surrounded by Chantry forces in the middle of a mage rebellion. The Seeker has been accommodating, but you understand my caution.”

So, he is not quite so unconcerned with worldly matters as she thought.

Now, then, is the moment when a more assured, glib-tongued leader would make an ally of him with optimistic promises. She would vow that the Chantry would not hurt him, pledge that she’d use her power to protect him.

But Halani knows better than to make promises she cannot keep. She has no more power over his fate than she does over her own.

So, she simply says: “I do.”

Solas stands. “I thank you for your time. I will leave you to your solitude.” Halani dips her head in acknowledgement.

After he leaves, she doesn't attempt to pray to Dirthamen. Her mind is too unsettled to find the beginning threads of the meditation. She watches the fire burn down to embers, until she is shivering. She makes her way back to the lake, slips across, then up through the gate. Some people are still gathered around fires; others are at the Singing Maiden, their ballads and laughter ringing in the crisp moonlit air. She can hear Varric’s voice even from here.

She wishes she had someone to make merry with. She thinks of dear Enan. What would she think of Halani now, the reluctantly appointed leader of a shemlens’ religious rebellion?

She’d laugh for a very long time. And then she’d order her to come home.

_If only I could, lethallan._

Halani rubs her left hand, which has been blessedly normal for the past two days. She stops at the threshold of her shack. On the ground, in front of the door, is the dried sprig of some kind of plant.

She picks it up, rolls it between forefinger and thumb. The scent pricks her nose: Citrus, iron, overripe plum.

Blood lotus.

Had it blown here from the apothecary’s? Or had someone left it for her to discover?

She remembers its traditional elven meaning, from those long lessons at Keeper Deshanna’s knee.

_Sacrifice._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's pretty dialogue heavy, but I think their convos are important - Solas is judging her hardcore and trying to figure out if she'll be an evil despot, if he needs to start sabotaging her, etc. He's gathering intel from a being that he sees as inferior. It's going to take a lot of time and work for him to come around.


	2. Challenge

It will take them a week to reach the Hinterlands.

When Haven’s gate closes behind them, she feels like she's shucked a suit of heavy armor. At last, she can escape the stares, the whispers, the constant bickering between the Chancellor and the Seeker, the mages and the soldiers. She has a straightforward goal: Find Mother Giselle. It is far less terrifying than her other goal: Save the world.

The Seeker and Varric seem to relax on the road as well. Their smiles are quicker and words easier, even if they still regard each other with the wary hostility of two tomcats in the same barn.

As for Solas, he is as exactly as reserved as always. Though she’d returned to the firepit several times after their strange conversation, he never came again.

It is, she decides, a relief. He is normally so aloof. When he brings his scrutiny to bear, it scalds.

In hindsight, their exchange that night had been rather extraordinary. In the tumult of those first days, she hadn’t properly appreciated it. Now, as she scans the landscape from the back of her horse, or stares up at the darkness inside her tent before sleep, she hears his words again: _Every great war has its heroes._ _I’m just curious what kind you’ll be._

He had said it as if he knew _exactly_ what kind of hero she’d be. As if he’d seen it all before and had her utterly figured out. Had he meant it as a challenge? A dare? She is torn between wanting to prove him wrong, and wanting to show him that she doesn’t give a copper piece what he thinks of her.

Her old pride, rearing up again.

She is… self-conscious, she supposes. The other day, she had made the mistake of bringing up their shared race. He was quick to let his disdain for the Dalish show.

“ _Our_ people?” he’d said. “Oh. You mean the elves.”

“You don’t consider yourself an elf?”

He was beside her on foot, and she on horseback. He kept his eyes straight ahead on the horizon as he said: “Not all elves are the same.”

“And what kind of elf are you?” _The better kind, clearly_ , she wanted to say, and the unspoken reproach colored her tone.

“Dalish and city elves alike chase after a dream of ancient glory, but have little idea of the truth of their history.”

“And you do.” Her hands tightened on the reins at his condescending tone. Her horse shifted beneath her, sensing her tension.

“Of course. I have—”

“—seen it in the Fade,” she chorused with him.

She was staring fixedly at the road ahead of them. She felt, rather than saw, his sharp glance in her direction.

“Yes,” he said. “As it were.”

He slowed his pace, and fell back with the wagons.

And she kneed her horse into a brisker pace, until she was at the head of their party, just behind the forward scout.

It was hardly fair of him to take that patronizing tone. She is no dreamy-eyed idealist, nor an elven purist who uses tales of her race’s past glory to straighten her back against their current oppression. She regards ancient elven glory in the same way she regards the Maker—it's a pleasant thought, but how can it help them in the here and now?—so his unwarranted condescension makes her jaw clench.

Clearly, he holds some kind of grudge. But he can’t blame _all_ elves for his quarrel with some.

She sighs. It shouldn’t matter what he thinks of her. But to be an elf dragged into shemlen politics, and a Dalish one at that—and to have that alienation compounded by one of the People, even a bare-faced one…

For some reason, she wants his _esteem_. Even though she barely knows him. And it rankles. It reminds her too much of her insecure days as a child.

So she finds herself avoiding him, and thus any potential embarrassment.

Until one evening, when he announces he's going to forage for herbs, and she decides to join him. She'd realized that a good part of her self-consciousness was because he claimed to know so much about her and her people, and yet she knows nothing of him. It is an imbalance she resolves to correct.

They walk in silence from the camp, each holding a burlap sack and searching the ground for elfroot. The sun is sinking, the air cooling, bugs beginning to thicken the air. “I’d like to know more about you, Solas.”

“Why?”

She almost laughs. Something about his expression stops her.

“Why does anyone want to get to know anybody else? We’re going to be spending a lot of time together, fighting together... It’s strange to know so little about you.”

“What do you wish to know?”

His tone is light, but he doesn’t meet her eyes as he bends down to rifle through the undergrowth.

“I don’t know. Where are you from, for a start?”

It is a simple question, and yet the subtle hunch of his shoulders makes her feel like she's leading an interrogation.

“A village. To the north.”

She waits for more. But he is silent. She sighs and kneels down to pluck an elfroot sprout. “I see. Forget I asked.”

Their burlap sacks are full, and the sun has sunk down into the trees, by the time he speaks again.

“There is, in truth, not much to tell. I have spent much of my life wandering the Fade. It is difficult, at times, to remember how to speak with people other than spirits. Forgive me.”

_He believes spirits are people?_ she wonders. Out loud, she says: “No need to apologize.”

“I am used to… my privacy. But if you have questions, you only need ask.”

She accepts it as the politeness it is, and asks nothing more of him as they walk back to camp.

Later, as she tosses and turns in her tent, the reason for her insecurity becomes obvious. She craves his approval because she feels lost without an elder to guide her. She is accustomed to being friendless, but she’d always had her Keeper. As the rest of the children her age played their intricate games of flirtation and competition, she’d stalked the forests with Keeper Deshanna in a world of wordless reverie and instinct.

Before her magic had awakened late in life, the Keeper had been a respected hunter. She taught Halani how to tell whether a halla’s tracks were those of a fawn, yearling, female, male. How long ago the animal had passed through from the softness of its dung. Whether it was well-fed or ailing. How to use the stars to tell time, and direction. What the phases of the moons meant, in lore as well as practical matters such as childbirth, animal behavior, the growing of plants and their harvesting.

She made Halani feel clever and special and valued, those early years when she’d had so much to prove to the Clan.

And now, she turns to Solas to fill that role. Just as she’d been an outsider at five years old, when her parents had died from dysentery and Clan Lavellan took her in, she is now a Dalish elf thrust into a strange shemlen religious order. She feels adrift, insecure.

And she wants an elder to make her feel clever, and special, and valued.

It is so... childish, when she lays it out like that.

And she could not have picked a worse person to try to impress.

_Perhaps_ , part of her thinks, _that is exactly the appeal._

Because as much as she tries to be wise, and careful, and humble—she can never ignore a challenge.

* * *

It doesn’t take her long to realize that the quickest way to win his regard is to ask him about his travels in the Fade. She begins plying him with questions at the campfire and on the road. He describes in great detail the ancient sanctums he's stumbled upon, the spirits he has befriended. Cassandra treats his theories with suspicion and consternation; Varric with stilted jokes and uneasiness.

But to Halani, strange magics are nothing new. And as Solas sees she asks questions with no intent to disprove or disparage, he seems to enjoy sharing his knowledge.

But any questions about his life on the other side of the Veil still cause him to freeze over like one of his cold spells.

Halani had observed that most societies organized their personal space by rank. The higher the rank, the larger their boundaries are, upon which you were not to intrude. Human commoners live in piles while their kings and queens have castles. Even the Keeper had had her own tent, while the rest of the clan sprawled together like pups.

So what kind of person had a reserve so deep and so wide that even a simple query— _tell me more about yourself_ —felt like a dreadful trespass? Who, when anyone chanced to stand near him, subtly moved away to keep his distance?

Answer: The kind of person who carried a fortress with him wherever he went.

Yes, it is obvious he hadn’t grown up in a clan, nor in an alienage for that matter. Reserve such as his would have never had space to flourish. Where in all of Thedas could an elf such as him become so proud? Unbent under the shemlens’ loathing of their kind, the daily toil of survival?

It is—remarkable.

And dangerous. To walk tall amongst shemlen as if he were a lord.

And…

She has an inkling that there is another purpose for that fortress of his. There is _something_ lurking beneath the arctic precision of his words. A turgid river thrashing beneath the thinnest layer of ice.

You build a fortress to hide your shame. She knows that story well, because it is her own.

She wonders what kind of hatred he holds for himself, that he’d built his so large.


	3. Momentum

The first time they fight together, she can’t stop watching him.

They'd been making their way around the southern shore of Lake Calenhad. When they finally enter the rolling foothills of the Hinterlands, they see smoke, and go to investigate—and find three mages and four templars warring by the burning remains of a farmhouse.

Varric and Halani vote to stay back and let them fight without interference. Solas says nothing. And the Seeker, of course, thinks everyone will fall into line once she announces to both parties that they are the Inquisition and they are here to sort everything out.

So she marches on up to the fray—and right as she is making some proclamation about the Inquisition, a mage shoots a lightning bolt at her just as a templar begins to charge her.

“Andraste’s tits!” Varric curses, sets Bianca on his shoulder, and starts firing.

Solas throws up a barrier around the Seeker, and casts a wall of ice between the mages and templars.

And Halani, falling into the ease of old habits, slinks around the edge of the clearing, slides behind a mage furiously chanting a curse, and thrusts a knife into her ribs. A warning prickles the back of her neck. She turns, just in time to leap backwards as a templar slashes at her with a broadsword.

And then—she sees him.

Solas. She’d always thought his staff looked like an odd sort of cane, ineffectual and unimpressive. But now he wields it with the finesse of a dancer. Not the bawdy human kind—the kind of elven dancers she’d seen once as a child, who performed ancient stories by firelight, their limbs supple as saplings, their movements eloquent and decisive.

Solas whirls, and stamps, and his magic flows from him like thought. It is the kind of effortless grace she aspires to, ever since she saw her first knife dance and decided to take up the blade over the bow.

It stuns her for a moment. Just long enough for the templar to swing at her again. She dodges to the side but stumbles on the body of the mage she killed (clumsy, clumsy!), and lands on one knee. The templar is above her, raising his sword for a blow. She ducks her head and rolls to the side, leaps to her feet—

And Solas is there, a blur of silver and ice, and suddenly the templar is on the ground, choking on blood, and Solas with his boot on his neck.

Solas looks at her, as she stares at him.

The thunder in her ears subsides, and she looks around, and Cassandra is limping towards them, Varric too, and the only sound now is the roar of the flames.

“I would have been fine, you know,” she says. Her voice is hoarse, and she coughs to clear it.

He doesn’t blink as he regards her. “I know.”

She turns away, irritated, and begins the walk back to rejoin their party.

For the rest of the evening, the irritation is like a tiny pebble in her boot she can’t remove. She broods about it as they clean up, and continue their trek to the scouts’ camp. She didn’t want to be rescued. It was her first fight out on the road, and she wanted the chance to prove herself.

 _Who are you trying to prove yourself to_? she asks herself as she stares sullenly at the fire, eating her soup, trying not to glance at Solas. _Are you an insecure child again?_

She knows very well who she is trying to prove herself to.

By the time she’s finished slurping up her dinner, she makes up her mind.

She stalks over to Solas. He is sitting down on a blanket, sipping his mug of soup. He looks up at her with a canted eyebrow.

“You know hand-to-hand.”

He hadn’t used magic to disarm and overpower that templar, she’d realized as she mulled over the battle. He’d used a style of combat she’d never seen.

“I do,” he replies.

“You’re very good at it.” She says it less like a compliment and more like an accusation.

“I am.”

“Spar with me.”

He smiles. "I take it you don't mean right now.”

“No. Tomorrow morning before breakfast. And every morning you can.”

“If,” she adds, trying and failing to sound casual, “you want.”

He just smiles, sips his soup, and nods.

She makes a stiff bow, turns, and retires to her tent.

She falls asleep quickly, and dreams of smoke and blood.


	4. Dawn

When she steps out of her tent the next morning, Solas is already going through the fluid motions of a drill. His back is to her. He faces east, towards the rising sun.

She doesn’t speak, just takes her place to his right, watching him out of the corner of her eye and trying to mimic his movements. They are familiar—she realizes that they’re similar to the meditation exercises Keeper Deshanna had taught her, oh so long ago. At first, she is stiff with sleep and self-consciousness. But she sees that his eyes are closed. He isn’t watching her (or her clumsy attempts to mimic him) and she relaxes, catching the rhythm of his breathing, and slowing hers to match.

Her eyes drift shut as they perform the final salutation to the rising sun, the same way the Keeper had shown her.

“Would you like to spar, or would you like me to teach you some of the foundational principles first?”

Her eyes flick open. He is facing her now. His voice is quiet, his gaze level. The sun strikes his irises from the side, lighting them into silver coins.

He has freckles, she realizes. The color of wheat. They span the bridge of his nose, his cheekbones.

She forgets what he has said, for a moment.

Her face is warm when she finally replies: “Foundational principles.”

“Very well. I fight using the ancient style of Athimshiral. The Path of—”

“Humility,” she says with him. _Athim_. She remembers the word well.

He considers her for a moment. “Exactly so.” She can’t help the smile that quirks her lips.

He raises an eyebrow. “I too appreciate the irony of an elf named Pride teaching the Path of Humility.”

She ducks her head. “Please, continue.”

“It is called this because it is a fighting style that teaches you how to yield, to be supple, to use your enemy’s strength against them.”

He takes a fighting stance across from her, his knees slightly bent, his palms opened in readiness.

And he aims a kick square in the center of her ribs.

She doesn’t think—she leaps backwards, well out of range, and crouches down, elbows up, ready to spring.

But he doesn’t attack again.

“Now,” he says, “you try to kick me.”

The words have barely left his lips when she leaps forward in a flying kick. He doesn’t step backwards to evade it. He pivots, twists to the side, so her kick goes right past him. He yanks on her leg with one hand and then presses between her shoulderblades with the other, pushing her forward in the direction of her kick. She can’t stop her momentum and tumbles to the ground, her long training propelling her into a somersault that ends in a fighting crouch.

She stands up straight, and brushes off her leggings.

“Tell me what you noticed,” he commands.

“Neither of us landed a kick. Yet I ended up in the dust.”

“Why?”

“You didn’t just evade. You…” _Counterstrike_ is not quite the right word. He only had pushed her along the path she had already chosen. “Accelerated my action. Upset its balance.”

“That is… An apt way of putting it.”

“Are you surprised?”

“I’ve noticed—you make fine distinctions between subtleties. It is impressive for one of your— age.”

What word had he been about to say? “Upbringing”? “Kind”? Another insult about the Dalish?

“Thank you," she says. “ _Hahren._ ”

She hasn’t used the word with him before. It is too comfortable and intimate, something she associates with the aunties and uncles in her clan. But now she uses it as a jibe at his condescending compliment. He speaks to her as if she is an adolescent da’len.

His only reaction is a cool smile.

And then he kicks her again. Once more, instinctively, she leaps backwards, and then curses, shaking her head.

“Let me try again,” she says.

This time, when he kicks, she steps to the side, but she is not quick enough to grab his leg and push him forward.

“You stepped too far away from me,” he says. “Your method of fighting is all in evasion. You keep your distance and dart in like a wasp. It is effective, but Athimshiral is different. Like humility, it requires sympathy. You must be close to your enemy. Close enough to breathe his same air.”

Solas steps nearer to her. She can feel the heat of his body and is acutely aware of the sweat trickling down the small of her back. She can’t look him in the eye so she focuses on the movement of his torso, his leg, as he lifts it in slow motion into a kick.

“Now,” he says, “don’t step fully to the side. Twist. Pivot, only moving one foot. Stay _close_.” She follows his instructions. She doesn’t dare look up into his face.

“Now, grab my leg, and get your arm around my back—and push.”

It is awkward to do this at such a slow pace. Her chest presses against his left arm, her arm wraps around his back, her hand grips the place where his thigh meets his knee. She feels the muscle, hard beneath her palm. Her nose is scant inches from his neck, and she smells his scent, spicy and sylvan.

She grits her teeth. And pushes. Harder than warranted.

He obediently falls forward, somersaults, and rolls to his feet.

He turns to face her. “Again,” he says. “Faster.” Her cheeks are hot. And her palms are tingling.

But if he notices her discomposure, he says nothing.

At the end of their training session, she bows.

“Thank you,” she grits out. She doesn’t know why she feels so irritated with him. It was very generous of him to take the time to teach her.

“You wish to learn more tomorrow morning?”

She regrets her rash request last night at the fire. But she won’t take it back.

“Yes,” she responds, striving to match his cool tone. “Tomorrow morning.”

He bows his head, and she leaves camp to carry out her usual morning chore of fetching water.

When she reaches the river, she kneels down on the bank and splashes her face with cold water.

She closes her eyes. Her heart is thrumming in her neck. Her mouth is dry. She breathes deep, all the way down into her belly, and tries to gather up the threads of her thoughts and wind them around a spool.

So.

There are two potential reasons why his very presence seems to set her teeth on edge. Why she feels so clumsy and blundering around him.

The first: She hates him.

The second…

Well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna start reposting again tomorrow - need to give myself a little fun task with all the other stuff going on right now! Hope you've enjoyed the first chapters!


	5. Hot Spring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some steamy (literally) UST for you!

A full month later, they pass back through Haven’s gates.

After they found Mother Giselle, they decided to stay to aid refugees, clear the roads of both mages and templars, and establish order at the Crossroads. Halani had never seen so much blood in her life. The green, green grass of the Hinterlands was slick with it.

She has smelled nothing but smoke and rot for weeks. It clings to her clothes, her hair; she can taste it with each breath she takes. So, her first order of business, after the horses are stabled and her gear put away, is to find somewhere to scrub herself clean.

She knows that there is probably a servant somewhere who would haul a tub over to her hut and fill it with hot water. But the thought of sitting in still water like a chicken in a stew pot makes her itch. How humans feel clean after such a ritual is beyond her.

Her clan had never been far from a creek or river. Even in winter, they broke the ice, dipped their rags, and scrubbed themselves in the bone-aching chill of dawn.

She wants to bathe where the air will move against her skin.

She thinks of going down to the river and doing just that—but she doesn’t need any more cruel rumors about the Dalish floating around Haven.

So, where?

Perhaps the apothecary would know of a hot spring.

She turns her steps towards the apothecary’s. As she crosses the threshold, the pungent, herbaceous air stings her nose.

Adan turns to face her. As does— _Solas_.

She very nearly turns around and walks out of the door. She has been avoiding him. Well, as much as one can avoid a traveling companion in a very small party. That was the other thing she was looking forward to about Haven. Him in his hut, she in hers. No forced proximity by the campfire, or on the road, or during skirmishes. No more conversations that always seemed to end with her snapping at him, or showing off like a child, or otherwise losing her composure. Those claustrophobic days and nights in the Hinterlands—she’d felt all odds and ends, a teenager again.

Because she didn’t want to dwell on her attraction to him, she’d fueled it all into anger. And avoidance.

But it’s too late for her to turn around. They’ve stopped their conversation—which seemed to be about the various herbs Solas had managed to forage on the road—and have both turned to blink at her expectantly.

“Greetings, Herald—” Adan clears his throat. “I mean. _Lady_.”

He can tell she doesn’t like the first title. He probably doesn’t realize that the second is equally strange to a Dalish elf.

“How may I be of service?” he asks.

“Hello, Adan,” she says, turning to face him, her back to Solas. “I was wondering—do you know of any hot springs nearby?”

“Hot springs? Hm... Yes. There is one, if you cross the bridge and go directly north. There should be a little wooden marker by the path. But it’s a little too close to the Temple for my liking.” Adan grimaced beneath his facial hair. “I can’t imagine having a nice relaxing soak with _that_ ,” he threw a hand up in the approximate direction of the Breach, “hanging so close over my head.”

“Even so,” she said, smiling and turning to leave. “I think I’ll brave it. Thank you.”

“Wait.” Solas.

She stops, pausing in the doorway. “Yes?”

“The Fade—it is still thin there. It would not be prudent to go alone.”

She taps the blades strapped on her back. “I’m hardly defenseless.”

Even as she speaks, she has a vivid image of herself, naked and cold and wet, clambering through a snowbank to fight some gods-awful screeching Terror demon.

“Still. I shall go with you.”

She tries not to glare at him. Her desire for a bath wars with her desire to avoid him. The former, of course, wins. (After all, the latter is only a very flimsy facade. If she is honest with herself, she wants more, and more, and _more_ of him, to the point where she flushes to recall her dreams...) “Very well,” she snaps, and marches out the door.

They manage to walk the entire way without speaking. They cross the bridge, and find the trail marker, and scramble up the ice and snow. The Breach hangs above their left shoulders, beating down malevolently like a chartreuse second sun.

Soon enough, they round a bend, and there it is: A pool the size of her hut, teal in color, steam drifting slantwise above it like a gaggle of lost spirits from the Fade.

Solas abruptly stops and turns to face the direction they came, his back to the spring, staff gripped firmly in hand.

“I will keep guard here," he announces.

She is both annoyed and relieved by his propriety.

She wants nothing of this to resemble flirtation. So she carefully avoids glancing in his direction. She unstraps her blades, quickly strips off her clothes (not wanting even the _sound_ of her undressing to be suggestive), and picks her way barefoot across the snow and rocks. She sticks a toe in, then her foot, then the leg, and slides her whole body in.

She exhales in satisfaction. The contrast of the hot water with the cold air is delicious. The steam rises from the surface and clings to her face. She wants to savor it, the warmth, the mineral tang of the water against her lips. But it is impossible to relax with _Him_ standing there. So she quickly scours her face, her arms, her legs. Dunks her head and scrubs from her scalp to the matted ends of her hair till the lingering stink is gone.

She pauses. She can’t help but glance at him. And she feels, with a sensation very close to pain, how her hair sticks to her cheeks, the back of her neck, her breasts. A strand is stuck to her mouth. She brushes it away, and her palm lingers, presses against her chilled lips. Her skin is tingling. Her breath comes quick. From the cold air, she tells herself.

The fact is: She is naked.

And he is standing—right. There.

She has a vision, fleeting as a spark rising from a fire: His body in the water, pale and freckled, his wet chest pressing against hers—

She dunks her head again and rises, shaking her head from side to side like a dog. No. No. _No._ She scoffs at herself and climbs out of the spring, shivering as she dries herself using her blouse as a makeshift towel and shimmies back into her leggings and boots. Then the damp blouse, and the tunic, and the straps, and the knives.

“I’m decent,” she announces very loudly.

She wrings the water from her hair, the droplets burning holes into the snow. Even still, her hair begins to freeze into pliant icicles. She sighs and ties it all loosely back with a leather tie.

Solas glances her up and down, but not in a remotely appraising way. Rather, clinical. She probably looks a fright, hair frozen into disarray, her lips blue with chill.

He flicks his wrist, and warmth gathers around her neck and creeps up her skull. It’s the most peculiar, pleasant sensation—she feels the water being sucked from her scalp, like wind in reverse.

It rises from her in waves of steam.

She puts her hands to her head. It’s warm, and only a little damp.

“Thank you.”

She takes out the hair tie, deftly braids, and ties it again.

She is several steps back down the trail to Haven, when she remembers to be polite.

She swings around to face him. “Did _you_ want to bathe?”

“Ah. Perhaps—yes. Do you have time?”

“Of course,” she says, and takes up his former position, her back adamantly to him. She can hear the clink and rustle as he removes his clothes.

Then the soft splash as he enters the water. More splashing, and the sound of scrubbing.

“This is rather nice,” he calls.

Instinctively, she glances back at him to answer. “Yes, it—”

She catches a glimpse of him, water up to his ribs, face down as he scoops water on his face, the back of his head. The pale limbs—the sculpted grooves of the muscles of his arms and shoulders—the long, supple line of his spine—

All this in a glimpse. She snaps her head forward, her face burning.

“Yes,” she continues inanely, “it is quite nice.”

She can hear him climb out, put his clothes back on, the crunch of his footsteps as he joins her at the trail.

She can feel him looking at her, and she reluctantly returns his gaze.

“Halani.”

It is the first time she can remember that he’s used her name.

He speaks very slowly and carefully, as if he has been thinking over the words for a long time.

“Do you... dislike me?”

Her face goes hot all over again.

“No—it’s not… Well, sometimes you can just be—a bit, somewhat… Condescending. And it makes me feel like you think I’m stupid.”

His gaze settles somewhere past her shoulder.

“Ah,” he intones.

“But I know it’s not personal. Because you’re like that with everyone.”

“I… I am like that with everyone,” he repeats slowly.

It takes her a moment to place his tone: Bitterness.

It takes her another moment to realize that it is directed at himself, and not at her.

“Well,” he finally says. “For what it’s worth—I do not think you are stupid.”

He stares at her, and his eyes seem very gray against all the white of the snow.

She allows herself to meet his gaze. She can feel the intensity bubbling to her surface, and lets it. Dangerous, igneous. All the heat of her midnight dreams. Impossible to veil, when she stares at him so.

“And for what it’s worth,” she replies—and her voice is so quiet his eyes flick down to read her lips—“I do not dislike you.”

His eyes widen the barest amount. In shock? Confusion? Aversion?

She is afraid of what she will read in his face if she looks any longer.

She turns away quickly, and begins the descent back to Haven.

* * *

That night, just before she falls asleep, she reflects that Solas could have told her to go on without him before he bathed. She'd seen him in battle; he didn't need her protection.

But, he had not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He's probably not convinced everyone isn't Tranquil yet, but Halani is starting to become real to him and he's starting to realize he's still the same prideful elf, despite his attempts at caution and foresight.


	6. Changes

“Thanks to your work in the Hinterlands,” Leliana says, as she paces around the table, “we now have enough influence to head to Val Royeux to appeal to the clerics.”

 _Val Royeux_ , she thinks with a kind of wonder. Halani has never been Orlais. Decadent, tragic, elegant Orlais. And by all accounts, collapsing in on itself in civil war.

“When shall we leave?” she asks. They’ve been back for nearly a fortnight, and while the respite from travel has been pleasant, she can’t exactly relax with the Breach in sight every time she looks up at the sky. She’s been tossing and turning at night, a sinister presence haunting her dreams…

“As soon as possible,” Leliana replies, and Halani nearly sighs in relief.

“We’ll need time to get our supplies ready,” the Seeker interjects.

“And make contact with our scouts along the route so we know what we’re riding into,” Commander Cullen adds.

“Of course, of course,” Leliana says. “I’ll send my ravens straight away.”

And she slips from the room, followed by the Commander and Seeker, till Halani is alone, staring at the map. She steps close, and fingers the paperweight over Val Royeux, traces the lines of the map. From there, she draws a path up the serrated edge of the Waking Sea, into the Free Marches, to rub at the spot where her clan would be this month, if they were sticking to their normal seasonal route. But, with all the unrest between the mages and templars… Perhaps Keeper Deshanna had changed their routine, stuck to the safe areas far from humans and their wars.

The thought makes her uneasy.

So many things are changing, all across the known world. And it seems she will have a role to play in it.

She presses her palms to her eyes till she sees stars. Takes a deep breath.

And turns her steps towards the Singing Maiden, where Varric surely has a pint waiting for her.

* * *

While she didn’t exactly grow close with Varric on the road, over the past two weeks since their return she’s found herself at his fire more often than not. Sometimes she listens to him tell stories; other times they are just silent, and watch the flames. Out of all the people in the Inquisition, he is the least demanding. Out of all of them, it seems he has nothing to prove to anyone. He doesn’t scold (the Seeker), condescend (Solas), or test her for weakness (Leliana).

In his own way, he is just as private as Solas. Of course, he’ll share the most marvelous stories around the campfire. But he reveals little of his own thoughts and motivations. He deflects personal questions with witticism, exaggeration. Like the rogue he is, Varric dazzles with tricks of smoke and light, while his true self slips away into the shadows, unseen.

In other words: He lets her have her secrets, because he has his own.

She doesn’t often join him at the Singing Maiden (drunk humans; loudness; also, she can’t hold her liquor)—but as soon as he sees her walk in, he lifts his chin in acknowledgment, waves a hand at Flissa to bring her a drink.

She sits down next to him, in his corner booth carefully chosen for its vantage over the rest of the bar. A man—one of the volunteer recruits, if she remembers his face correctly—is sitting at the table, and immediately rises, bows, and leaves for another place as soon as she sits down.

“Am I that repellant?” she asks Varric with a laugh.

“Well, you’re a woman, _and_ an elf, _and_ the Herald of Andraste—so, in a word, yes. Not exactly the most relaxing person to share a drink with.”

As if on cue, Flissa passes by and plops down a mug of mead in front of her.

She reaches into her belt for coins, but Varric grabs her arm. “It’s on me, elf.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s only fair. After all, _you’re_ going to tell me what went down in your big fancy meeting just now.”

Varric flips a coin to Flissa. After she leaves, he murmurs: “I overheard someone saying something about our dear Spymaster sending off a flock of ravens.”

“We’re going to Orlais. Val Royeux. To convince the clerics we’re not heretics.”

“Ha. That sounds about as likely as them...well, accepting anything that isn’t directly written into their Chant of Light.”

“Which is very unlikely. I know.” She sighs and takes a sip of the mead. It’s pungent with herbs, and its burn is bracing. “But there has to be a chance, else Leliana wouldn’t advise it.”

Varric says nothing, just _hmm_ s to himself as he watches the comings and goings of the bar. Even though Haven is small, Halani still manages to see several people she swears she’s never seen before.

A familiar silhouette darkens the doorway.

Halani stiffens, then busies herself with taking another swig of the mead. She looks anywhere but near the door.

Varric stares at her. “What, Daggers? See a ghost?”

She tries to find another topic of conversation. “So, have you, ah, been to Orlais before?”

She can see _Him_ out of the corner of her eye, turning around the room as if looking for someone, seeing her and Varric, and beginning to walk towards them.

“Because I haven’t, and I’m rather curious—”

“Chuckles!” Varric shouts. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Halani forces herself to look up. The last time she’d spoken to Solas, he had asked her if she wanted to continue their morning drill, and she’d gracelessly gritted out a _No, thank you_ , and that had been that.

As excited as she is to go to Orlais, there is a part of her dreading being on the road with Solas again. (And another, larger part, that is reckless and hungry and thrilled.)

Now he is standing in front of their table, hands clasped behind his back, looking very cool and very out of place in this human, warm, drunk environment.

He nods to Varric, then turns to Halani. She forces herself to meet his gaze.

“Do you have a moment?” he asks.

“I need your help.”


	7. A Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a very important chapter in their relationship, in a subtle sort of way.

“With _what_?”

She doesn’t mean to sound so incredulous.

“I am conducting research to aid the Inquisition,” he states, as primly as if he is in a library and not a tavern. “My current text touches on matters of the Dalish. I thought you might help me parse out some of the peculiars.”

_I thought you had the Dalish pretty thoroughly figured out._ The retort snaps through her mind, but she knows better than to string that arrow and let fly.

Instead, she eyes him and takes another gulp of mead. Picks a subtler weapon from the quiver.

“If you think that I have knowledge that your wide travels have not yet acquainted you with,” she says, “then, by all means, you’re welcome to it.”

One side of his mouth ticks down. A wince? At the memory of his condescension, or at her rudeness?

“You certainly have knowledge that I do not. I would be grateful to learn from it.”

She does not sense any sarcasm in his tone. Mollified, she turns to Varric—to find him watching their conversation with all the avidity of a child at a horse race.

She makes an emphatic resolution to make sure that no hint of her—attraction—makes its way into any of his stories. She really needs to control her reactions better.

She has no doubt Varric is discrete, for the time being. But if this whole mess gets resolved, she does not want the world to read about her embarrassment in the Tales of the Herald of Andraste.

“Well, Varric,” she says, standing up from the table, “I suppose I’m off. Thank you for the drink.”

He salutes her with a gold-ringed hand. “Anytime, Daggers.”

She follows Solas to the door. She glances back at Varric, and he is still watching them, expression pensive.

When she steps outside, it is surprisingly dark. She still hasn’t grown accustomed to how quickly night falls in the mountains. The sky is purpling, the shadows long across the ground.

They walk to his hut. He pauses for a moment at the door, making a strange gesture with his hand.

Wards, she realizes. He set _wards_ on his little shack.

She remembers her theories about his need for privacy, and wonders again what secret shame lay behind his reserve.

“You may enter,” he says, and she realizes she’s been standing at the threshold, instinctively waiting for his invitation.

The interior is simple, much the same as the hut they had given her. But he has a bookshelf, and a table piled with herbs to rival the apothecary next door. There is a shadowed doorway—she glimpses the foot of a bed, and turns away quickly. 

“What specific questions do you have?” she asks, as he kindles a fire in the hearth.

“It is a strange text,” he says, without turning around. “It has many authors, in somewhat of a written approximation of your people’s oral tradition. Passed from clan to clan, with Keepers crossing out lines and rewriting, or scratching addendums in the margins...” _Your_ people. Not ours. She should cease to be irritated by these things by now.

And yet.

He stands up, the fire now roaring, and seems to notice that there is nowhere to sit. The two chairs are buried beneath stacks of books and scrolls.

“Pardon the mess,” he says, picking up the books and setting them gingerly on the ground next to the bookcase.

He gestures for her to sit. She does, but uncomfortably. She’s never gotten used to chairs, and never knows where exactly one’s arse is supposed to go. All the way to the back? At the very front? She settles for a precarious lean at the edge.

“What is the text about?” she asks.

“Folktales. Legends. Interwoven, as such things are, with history.”

He sits down gracefully in the other chair, one leg crossed and his fingers laced over his knee, as proper as a shemlen lordling. Not a Dalish elf indeed.

She scoots back and leans one elbow on the armrest, trying to mirror his casual insouciance.

“It’s not the content I have questions about,” he continues. “It seems clear enough from the rich layers of stories, from some ten or eleven Keepers across time and place. It’s their intent, and reception, that remain a mystery. I have theories, but…”

“You mean—the context in which the stories were told?”

He smiles and leans forward. “Exactly.” On a more expressive person, it would look like enthusiasm.

As it is, it makes her cough and look at the ground.

“Or, to be a shade more precise,” he adds, “the context in which they were _received_. Which parts were taken literally, or rather, _seriously_ —and which parts were taken lightly, as mere stories.”

“I see.”

She casts her mind back, to those humid summer nights around the fire after everyone had eaten, and the Keeper would weave stories of the Creators and the Forgotten Ones long into the night… Had she believed all of them, back then?

Does she believe in them now?

She recites the Creators in her mind, their names and order as familiar as Keeper Deshanna’s face:

Elgar’nan, All-Father, God of Vengeance.

Mythal. The Protector.

Falon’Din, of death and luck.

Dirthamen, he of the many secrets, with his ravens Fear and Deceit. Her patron god.

Andruil, She Who Leads The Hunt.

Sylaise, the Hearthkeeper.

June, God of many makings.

Ghilan’nain, Mother of Halla.

And Fen’Harel. Trickster. The Dread Wolf.

Evanuris. Brothers, sisters, enemies, sometimes lovers. Their legends vast and mysterious, contradictory. Even before she was taken in by Clan Lavellan, she must have heard their names, their stories. Her parents must have whispered them to her at bedtime, because she has to believe that even city elves forced to bow to the Chantry keep the secret spark of faith alive.

“It’s hard to say, exactly,” she finally says. She looks up, and flushes to see that he has been staring at her. No— _observing_. Reading, interpreting.

“Of course,” she says, “children believe everything they hear. Be it a fanciful tale told by an agemate or a sacred legend handed on down through the ages. I’m sure, even though I wasn’t born into the Clan, that I still fully believed in the stories. Took them for literal truth, as real as my own life.”

“You weren’t… You weren’t born into your clan?”

She steels herself against the old shame she feels when discussing the topic. Still, it wells up, hot and thick like sap.

“I was not,” she replies stiffly.

“How did you come to be raised by them, then? Please, do not answer if it is too personal—it is just surprising, considering your…” His eyes trace the lines of her vallaslin.

She lifts her chin a notch higher, defiant.

“...remarkable skills, and aptitude for the ways of the Dalish,” he finishes.

She can no longer meet his oddly earnest gaze. She looks over his shoulder into the hearth.

“Well. Such are the fruits of a childhood spent in self-hatred and shame.” In her peripheral vision, she sees him go utterly still.

Into the silence, she adds:

“You learn to be so good that no one dares to gainsay your place.”

She looks at him again, expecting to find pity, or the detached air of analysis she’s so used to from him.

Instead, she finds him gazing into the fire, his mouth twisted as if he has drunk something bitter.

“As for how I came to be raised by them,” she continues, as curtly as if she is delivering a field report, “my parents were city elves. They, like many others in their alienage that year, got dysentery and died when I was five years old. They’d left orders for their friend to bring me to Clan Lavellan and appeal for my adoption. My mother had met Keeper Deshanna on one of the Clan’s visits to the city, and knew she was a good woman. Now that I’m older, I realize my parents must have been… Romantics. To entrust their child to the Dalish, over friends and family? Anyway. Their friend—her name was Arsini—Arsini went and appealed to the Clan. The Keeper was amenable but the rest refused to take in a flat-ear. Still, they were hospitable, and knew what dangers she had risked by leaving the alienage. So they let her stay the night. By dawn, she had long since snuck away, leaving me behind. The Clan had no choice but to take me in, as Arsini well knew. And so I was a forced burden onto Clan Lavellan. I have striven, over the following eighteen years, to repay that debt.”

Over the course of her speech, she has long since given up all pretense at faking comfort in her chair, and drawn up her knees to sit cross-legged.

As for Solas, he is still preoccupied with the fire. She half-thinks he hasn’t heard a word of what she said.

But then he looks up, and his expression is so somber she knows he feels the weight of the story.

And she wishes he didn’t. She doesn’t want pity, or admiration, or whatever false virtue people ascribe to having been orphaned.

She had simply survived, long enough to become a burden, and then hopefully, now, a boon to the Keeper. If she hadn’t proved herself, she wouldn’t now have her vallaslin.

“But they accepted you,” Solas says, very softly, and draws three fingers across his cheek in an evocation of her blood-writing.

A chill tingles the back of her neck as he voices her exact thoughts.

“More or less.”

The air in the hut has become very warm. The lashing of the fire is hypnotic. The shadows are very dark. She didn’t drink that much mead, but everything has taken on the vivid, syrupy quality she associates with being drunk. She can smell the humid, summery smell of the herbs on the table, a balm after the scentless ice and snow of Haven. She can even smell him—that intoxicating scent she’d first noticed when they sparred for the first time, the musk of dirt and loam and woodsmoke. She wants to lean close, inhale it deeper, taste it on her tongue...

She closes her eyes to recenter herself. _Folktales_.

“As I was saying, as a child I’m sure I took the stories literally, as children are wont to do. As I grow older, I of course keep my faith. But it’s tempered with more understanding of how those kinds of stories work. I don’t think every detail is literally true. The Dalish—we’re not the rulekeepers of the Chantry, believing in some fixed truth just because it’s written down. And _only_ believing what’s written down, for that matter. We know stories are more about the spirit behind them, and can take on many different meanings depending on when and how they are told.”

“Do you believe the Evanuris were gods?”

She looks at him, perplexed. “What do you mean?”

“There are some theories that perhaps they were very powerful mages, much like Tevinter magisters. With enough magic, in the time of Elvhenan, things you would consider miracles would have been possible.”

“I’ve never heard such a theory… But I’m hardly a scholar. Besides, I wouldn’t know how to argue a meaningful difference between ‘gods’ and ‘very powerful mages.’”

Solas rests his chin on his hand, finger tapping his lip slowly, thoughtfully. “Hmm. A fair point.  What do you think is owed to a god, versus a powerful mage?”

“Respect,” she says immediately. “Which takes the form of offerings, prayers. And trying to behave in a way that is in accordance with their values.”

“But their values are so… varied,” he says, and a peculiar smile is on his lips. “How would one follow the ways of, say, both Sylaise and Elgar’nan? One believes in healing; the other in vengeance.”

She frowns, thinking it over.

“I suppose,” she says, “you appeal to different gods in different times. In peacetime, we turn to Sylaise. In matters of war, to Elgar’nan. And you also pick your patron god, as you can see from the vallaslin.”

His eyes flick over her bloodwriting again. “Ah. Dirthamen, I presume?” He is still smiling, in that odd, joyless way. Is he mocking her?

She nods. “It is traditional, for those who wield daggers as I do.”

His eyes go abstracted, somewhere over her shoulder. “And does no one,” he says, “take the mark of Fen’Harel?”

She holds back a shiver.

“Of course not! That would be…” She searches for the word. Blasphemous is not quite right, more suited to the Chantry fussing about someone who doesn’t agree with the Chant of Light word for word.

“ _Dangerous_ ,” she finally settles on.

“Ah,” he says. Again, that strange smile.

She realizes, with a frisson of shock, that it isn’t an expression of mockery.

No—it is the frozen smile of someone who is taking care to mask a great deal of pain. 

“Dangerous, how?” Solas asks.

“It’s just—I don’t know how to explain it, if you haven’t grown up with our beliefs. To draw the attention of the only one of the Evanuris still wandering this realm—it’s something we’re warned against, in big ways and small, our whole lives.”

“Ah, yes. ‘May the Dread Wolf never hear your steps.’”

“Exactly. Do you really know none of this?”

“Oh, I know most of it. But I do not see it from your perspective, of one who lives it.”

“You think we’re foolish,” she says, and it is not a question.

He regards her for a moment, mouth tight. “No. I do not.”

A month ago, she would have thought he was lying. Now, she isn’t sure. He speaks, at the very least, as if he is trying to convince himself.

And he is clearly endeavoring to learn her perspective. The Dalish perspective.

So she holds back her retort.

“To answer your question, as far as Fen’Harel is concerned, the Dalish are more wont to take the stories literally.”

“So you regard the tale of his betrayal as fact, but are more lenient with, say, the stories of  Elgar’nan’s pursuit of unwilling maidens, or the tales of Andruil hunting mortals?”

“I… I haven’t heard such tales. Are they in that book?”

“No. I suppose I…” He unfolds his legs, and stands up so abruptly she blinks. “Read in between the lines.”

He faces the fire, his back to her.

“What stories did your clan tell of Fen’Harel? I’m curious. The stories I was reading from the book—they seemed to place a special emphasis on him. As you did, just now. It’s still a bit of a mystery to me.”

“Well,” she says, “my favorite is the story of the Courser and the Wolf. Have you heard it?”

“Maybe so, but certainly not the exact version you know. Tell it to me.”

She wishes he was facing her, so she could read his face. What kind of anguish would make him smile so? Was _that_ what was behind his prickliness, when it came to anything to do with the Dalish?

Perhaps… Perhaps he had a story similar to hers, except abandoned by a Clan?

It would, she decides, explain a lot.

“Very well,” she says. “I shall tell you the tale of the Courser and the Wolf.” In her best imitation of Keeper Deshanna’s storytelling voice, she recites:

“The Dalish tell their dogs: ‘Take the Dread Wolf by the ear if he comes.’ This is why: Long ago, a clan lived on the Silent Plains. It was a terrible, lonely place where the sun was forbidden to shine. Their Keeper had a coursing hound. They had run down deer and hares and wolves together when they were young. But they had grown old together, Keeper and hound, and now only dozed before the campfire, dreaming of hunts.

"But then the Dread Wolf came, for the Keeper was wise and kind. The things Fen’Harel hates above all else. At night, he tried to steal into the Keeper’s dreams, to twist his mind and turn him against the People. But even in dreams, the courser guarded his master. He caught the Dread Wolf’s scent and gave chase across the Fade.

"Fen’Harel tried to shake his pursuer, but the hound ran as coursers can only run in their dreams. Even the wind couldn’t have fled that hound. He ran the Dread Wolf down and grabbed him by the tail. Fen’Harel howled, so loud that the Veil shook and even the stars scattered in fear. But still, the hound wouldn’t let go.

"Neither hound nor Wolf gave in. Finally, Fen’Harel bit off his own tail to escape, and away he fled. Ever since, the Dread Wolf thinks twice about playing his tricks when dogs are on guard."

After she finishes, there is a long silence.

“You are,” he says at last, “a very good storyteller.”

“Thank you.”

“Why is that one your favorite?”

She draws one knee to her chest, hugs it close. “I don’t know. Maybe,” she says slowly, thinking it through, “because it shows that bravery and tenacity are more important than brute strength. And,” she adds, smiling to herself, “I enjoy stories about longshot victories. When people—or dogs, I suppose—rise against expectations and excel.”

“Yes,” he replies, and he turns around so she can see the gentle smile on his face, “I can see how you might sympathize with such characters.”

He sits back down in his chair, steepling his fingers under his chin.

“Well, Halani, you have given me much to think about.”

Something in his demeanor has changed the atmosphere. From intimate, mysterious, shadowed— to prosaic, mundane. His earlier agitation has been smoothed away, and his tone is as pleasant and light as Ambassador Josephine at her most inscrutable.

She straightens in her chair, suddenly conscious of the fact that they are alone, in his home, at night.

“There’s so much I wish to know,” he says. “We’ve barely gotten to the thrust of the conversation I wished to have. But it gets late, and you’ll forgive an old elf for being tired.”

Her mind stumbles on the word _old_. She has never thought of him as old, precisely. Cultured, prodigiously self-controlled, knowledgeable—certainly. Is he inserting the word now to bring up their age difference, and thus the inappropriateness of her attraction to him?

_He doesn’t know_ , she tells herself. He can’t. Someone like him, she is realizing, would deny and deny until she professed it to his face.

And she wonders, for a moment, what he would do if she did just that.

Would he blush? Would he be disgusted? Would he call her a fool and push her out the door?

Or would he gaze at her with that evaluative look in his eye, and take a step closer?

She stands, quickly, and her legs ache and tingle from being still for so long.

“Of course,” she says. “We can continue the conversation another time.”

As ridiculous as it is in such a small room, he sees her to the door, and thanks her again.

“Oh—before I forget,” she says, spinning around to face him. “We had a meeting today. We’re heading to Orlais, to appeal to the clerics. As soon our supplies are ready, and we hear back from our scouts.”

“Thank you for letting me know,” he says. “I look forward to it.”

She bids him goodnight and steps outside. The air is cold and fresh and clean. She takes a deep breath, and stares up at the stars. She walks towards her hut, passing the tavern on the way. She considers popping in and finishing that drink she’d started with Varric, but she feels too full of an itchy, restless energy, hardly conducive to chatting over ale.

The thought of her fluffy shemlen bed is unbearable.

So picks up furs from her hut, filches a few bedrolls and canvas from the locked supply shed, and makes her way across the lake. Her little firepit is there, as it always is. She gets a fire going, and lays down an insulating double layer of canvas. She stacks all the bedrolls on top of one another. Thus sheltered from the chill of the ground, she lays down, drawing up the furs beneath her chin, her view of the stars only impeded by a few scraggly branches.

She tries to begin her prayer to Dirthamen, but it feels strange after her conversation with Solas. Suddenly, her faith feels like a string of baubles, vapid and childish.

Instead, she dwells on Solas himself. Had he, as she is beginning to suspect, been abandoned by a clan? Or perhaps left them himself, due to some great tragedy? Such things weren’t unheard of.

The rules of the clans can be strict, and unforgiving.

And the question she had failed to ask him: What did old Dalish legends have to do with the Inquisition and the Breach?

Well, they will soon have plenty of time to talk, when they set off for Orlais.

Content with this thought, she closes her eyes and drifts into sleep—and into troubled and twisty dreams.

When she wakes, blinking back the clear light of morning, she can remember nothing save the image of eight mirrors standing in a circle, each one of them shattered beyond repair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there's hardly any physical attraction / pursuit stuff going on, but I think it's way more realistic for Solas. He is hardly seeking romance right now, much less sex. He just woke up from a thousand years' slumber to this fucked up world, and he's on a mission. And if anyone could be chaste as a monk in pursuit of higher ideals, it's Solas. As Halani says in this chapter, he will not think about sex and romance unless she beats him over the head with it. And even then, it would take a lot to get him to act on it, because he's preoccupied with his mission and the fact that literally everyone he knew is now dead and he ruined the world and everyone is Tranquil.
> 
> The Inquisitor would only draw his attention -- and attraction -- if she first gains his esteem. And that is a very hard thing to gain. He's like, thousands of years old! For her wisdom to impress him, she must be wise indeed. These long conversations and philosophical debates are, in my mind, essential to prove their chemistry. And to make him realize that these so-called Tranquils are "real", too.
> 
> This chapter is especially important because
> 
> 1) they broach the hairy (ha! pun) topic of Fen'Harel  
> 2) she proves she's a smarty, even if not as well read and worldly as him  
> 3) she begins to see past his condescension, and realize he's actually in a lot of pain. #emo
> 
> Thanks as always for reading, and please let me know what you think!


	8. Orlais

“Well,” Varric says, “that did not go well.”

They are eating dinner at an inn on the outskirts of Val Royeux. Or rather, Solas, Varric, and Halani are eating dinner, and Cassandra is standing before the hearth, staring moodily into the flames with her arms crossed.

“That,” Cassandra practically growls, “is an understatement.”

Halani sips on a glass of Orlesian wine as red as blood, and it curdles in her stomach.

She stands up.

“I’m going to step outside. For some fresh air.”

She can feel their concerned glances on her back as she weaves her way through the tables and their occupants, the musical lilt of the Orlesian language filling the room like smoke. Once she’s outside, she closes her eyes and breathes in the humid midsummer air, spicy with blooming flowers.

She hears the cleric’s words again: _You think they'd send an_ elf _in our hour of need?_

Then the cleric’s blood on the knuckles of the templar. Lord Seeker Lucius’s arrogant dismissal.

The unexpected conversation with Grand Enchanter Fiona. Her invitation to Redcliffe...

She finds herself walking towards the stables. Her mount, Eva, is in the stall nearest to the door. She eyes the saddle hanging on a nail. Unlatches the gate, and Eva whinnies and nudges her nose into her hands, snuffling for treats.

“No apple, I’m sorry,” she murmurs.

“Running away, are we?”

Solas.

She turns, heart pounding.

“No,” she says, and her voice is too strident. She softens it. “I just… I’m restless.”

He steps from the shadows, comes to the gate of the stall. He lifts his hand as if he is going to open the gate and join her inside. Then he shifts and clasps his hands behind his back.

Part of her begins humming, warming, which always happens when he’s within two paces of her.

And the other, more analytical part of her, coolly notes that he doesn’t often make unnecessary moments.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she says abruptly, turning to Eva and running her fingers through her mane, untangling the knots, to avoid looking him in the eyes. “About that book we talked about before we left for Orlais.”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering. What do old Dalish myths have to do with the Inquisition?”

There is silence. Her hands pause; she glances back at him. He is staring downward, brow furrowed in thought.

“It is… A theory I have. But it is too tentative for me to discuss.”

She turns back to her horse, continuing the work of combing through her mane. “You wouldn’t like someone to discuss this theory with? Refine it?”

A pause.

“No,” he says.

She wonders at the disappointment that suddenly grips her throat. To be let inside that formidable fortress of his, even for a moment… “I understand,” she says.

She spends a few more moments detangling Eva’s mane. When she turns to leave, she is surprised to see Solas still standing there.

“I thought you’d left.”

He shifts. Again, more unnecessary movement. Quite uncharacteristic of him.

“Spit it out,” she says. “Whatever’s got you shifting around like a horse under an ill-made saddle.”

He regards her for a moment.

“I only wondered—are you okay?”

“What do you mean, am I okay?”

She opens the gate, latches it, and shoves past him.

“You’ve been very… quiet,” he says, following her. “Ever since we left the city.”

They are walking outside now, beneath the waxing moon. It’s cloudless and hot tonight, and the insects buzz in the breezeless air.

She stops. Turns to face him.

“It was disappointing. That’s all.”

“That’s all?”

She runs her fingers through her hair. “What else do you want me to say? I’m frustrated. Disheartened. Guilty, because I feel like somehow I wasn’t enough. What if I was a human? Would the cleric have heeded us then? To have the Chantry so vehemently opposed to the Inquisition… That is a difficult blow indeed for our cause.”

“Did you really expect anything else?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know!”

“I for one assumed all along that this was a fool’s errand.”

Unexpectedly stung, she retorts: “And _now_ you say so?”

He holds up a hand. “Peace. Fool’s errands are not always worthless. On the contrary. We not only appealed to the Chantry, but to Orlais as a whole. While the clerics and the Lord Seeker both rejected us, they are not necessarily popular with ordinary citizens. It may very well be that our unpopularity with the authority figures will spur our popularity with the common folk.”

Solas turns to regard the rolling hills all around them. Closes his eyes, breathes deep.

“This country is rebelling. Can’t you taste it? The outcome is in the hands of the people, not the old order. The clerics, the Lord Seeker… Their favor is meaningless. If we want power in Orlais, we must court the commoners.”

She mulls this over. “But how?”

“The same way you gained influence in the Hinterlands. Aiding those who needed it, being useful, creating order. Doing for them what they have long since stopped relying on the Orlesian nobility to do.”

“But we’ve barely extended our reach past Haven. It seems so grandiose, to talk about supplanting the Orlesian state...”

“Time, Halani. It will only take time.”

His eyes flick open, and when he meets her gaze, she is reminded that he has seen things like this unfold before, eons of warfare and strategy, as he wandered the Fade.

“Rest assured,” he continues, “you will soon have power enough to do all this, and more.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Watch history often enough, and like a game of chess, you’ll soon be able to predict the movements of the players.”

“And am I so predictable?” she asks him, her chin lifting higher in spite of herself.

He looks down at her. They are standing very close, she realizes. All she would have to do is take a small step forward, rise up on her toes, and…

“So far,” he replies, “yes.”

After a small moment of silence he adds: “You consistently do what you believe is right, no matter how much it costs you.”

He tilts his head to the side, opens his mouth as if he is about to say more.

Instead, he takes a step back, inclines his head in salutation, and walks back to the inn.

Later, as she tosses and turns on the bed she’s forced to share with Cassandra, she resolves to be more unpredictable from now on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fen’Harel loves that sweet smell of rebellion, ha.


	9. Thaw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's after midnight and I'm probably messing up my stats by posting at this time, but I was just so happy I finally wrote a new chapter! All of this is new material from here on out - I mapped out the scenes and I'm so excited for this journey we're going to go on. Lots of passion and heartbreak and poignant moments ahead.
> 
> In which I give my own interpretation of the first romance convo with Solas.

A week later, they are back on the road with another blessedly straightforward goal: Meet Grand Enchanter Fiona in Redcliffe.

When they arrive in the Hinterlands, Halani is shocked at the new calm settling over the land. Other travelers frequent the roads now, often with wagons or mules loaded with belongings, heading, like them, to Redcliffe village.

Sitting at the fire, breathing in the summer night air, Halani can’t help but feel gratified at the change they had wrought. They still keep a rotating watch as they sleep, but they no longer have to put out their fire to hide their camp from bandits. Smoke from burning buildings no longer hazes the air; distant screams and shouts no longer cut through the night.

“I’m glad we’re helping,” she says to Solas, on the morning of their last day of travel, as they walk together down the dusty trail. Cassandra and Varric are riding ahead of them, and she can hear the sound of their bickering, which has become strangely comforting after so many days together. It is not yet midday, but the weather is already warm and sunny, a gentle breeze stirring the fields and trees, and the birds are singing. 

“Yes,” Solas replies, “it does feel good to help people in need.”

On their journey to the Hinterlands, Halani noticed he started to seek her out more. He’d sit next to her at the campfire to eat in companionable silence, or silently go with her as they did their chores. Small things, all, but to Halani, it was as a dramatic of a change as, well, the Hinterlands before and the Hinterlands now.

She holds this satisfaction close, of this newfound—if not friendship—comfort Solas seems to feel with her. She no longer leaves every conversation feeling like a fool, because she is certain that he has at least a minimal respect for her. And beyond that, at some point during their journey from Orlais, she had come to a kind of peace with her responsibilities. Keeper Deshanna sent her to the Conclave for a reason. She had proven herself to be capable before, and she would prove it again. This realization made her sleep easier at night, and she had even begun to take genuine pleasure in the company of the others. Before, she had been looking for excuses to be suspicious, to argue—not just with Solas, but with all of them. But now she has resolved that she will treat them as—if not friends—companions.

So she decides she will brave the topic of his background again.

“What made you start studying the Fade?”

Solas is silent, and she half-expects him to deflect, as he normally does.

But then he begins speaking, and she can’t help but smile to herself.

“As I told you,” Solas says, “I grew up in a village to the north. There was little to interest a young man, especially one gifted with magic. But as I slept, spirits showed me glimpses of wonder I had never imagined. I treasured my dreams. Being awake, out of the Fade, became… troublesome.”

“Troublesome?” She glances at him, but his face is, as always, inscrutable.

“The world as you see it is but a pale reflection. It is difficult to appreciate it, when one is used to the richness of the Fade.”

She can’t help but grin, throwing her arms back to gesture to the sun, the breeze, the birdsong. “Well, it doesn’t feel like a pale reflection!”

She meets his eyes, and is surprised at the warmth she sees there.

“It is nice,” he says, “to see you smile.”

Her face suddenly hot, she sets her eyes back on the road. “Well, we haven’t had much to smile about, I suppose.” 

“True. It is easy to feel at ease here. The threat of the Breach feels very far away.”

Halani compulsively glances up, at that malevolent green slash in the sky. “I suppose it’s an illusion, the peace here.”

“No, it is not. The peace we brought is real.”

“Is it? Everything feels so… fragile.” She remembers their earlier topic of conversation. “I suppose you, more than the rest of us, must see how temporary everything is, after all of your journeys in the Fade.”

“Yes,” Solas says, “and no.”

She waits for him to continue.

“The Fade is richer than this world because it carries the imprints of emotions, of thousands of people’s perceptions. Even one day of peace after weeks of bloodshed… The fervor of appreciation that people have—it’s so potent, it feels like a century.”

At that, she is silent. With each conversation they have, her awe of his sensitivity—his poetry, his clear appreciation for beauty—grows.

“Was that too much?”

Halani looks at him, and his mouth is quirked in a wry smile.

“No, not at all. It’s just… so lovely, the way you see things,” she says, in spite of herself.

He looks surprised for a moment, and then turns his gaze forward. “I… Thank you. Few are willing to humor my philosophizing.”

She wonders, not for the first time, what kinds of people he has spent time with. He belonged at a university, with other scholars who appreciated the mysteries of the world. But an elf could hardly join their ranks. She understands anew his disdain for human company. Even Leliana, who is open-minded for an Andrastean, and clearly has some measure of reverence for the mystical, would not entertain these musings, touching as they did on Chantry fears of demons.

“I gather you haven’t spent your entire life dreaming,” Halani finally says.

“No. Eventually I was unable to find new areas in the Fade.”

“I meant, how have you spent your time outside of the Fade?”

“That’s what my answer was in response to. I have spent my days traveling in order to access more of the Fade.”

“That seems…” _Sad_ , she wants to say. She reconsiders, thinking of her resolution to be less prickly with Solas. “Well, I suppose if the Fade is really so full of wonder—I don’t mean that sarcastically—I can see why you wouldn’t want to dwell here. Even,” she adds, “on days as beautiful as today.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him look up and around, taking in the bright morning light, the trees and grass and sky.

“In truth,” he says, “I find myself more appreciative of the world these days. Though it is not the same as the Fade, I am less certain that it is altogether—lesser.” He doesn’t meet her eyes, and she wonders at the new stiffness in his posture. “It is an easy mistake, to think that which has changed is worse.”

"Changed? What do you mean?"

A long pause.

"My usual habits," he replies at last, "have changed." 

After another pause, he continues: “At the very least, it is not _un_ enjoyable to travel, as it has been for many years.”

“Oh? What’s different?”

“Well, the fighting, as strange as it may sound, has been rather enjoyable.”

“You can’t fight in the Fade?”

“You can. But fighting here is different. It is wholly an experience of the body. Blood, sweat, breath. The thrill of battle is physical. And it lingers. You feel it for days afterwards, down to your bones.” 

Her face is hot again. Her mind is stuck on the other things of this world that are blood, sweat, breath, thrilling, that leave an ache in your body…

Finally, she manages to say, “And you probably can’t eat in the Fade.”

Solas laughs. “True enough. Though, there are things that are much like eating, that sate a different hunger.”

Again, she has to force her mind back to the moment, distract herself from the images suddenly rising in her mind—his lips on her skin—

“In any case,” Solas says, “I’m glad my exploration of the Fade also yields the enjoyment of new experiences.”

She focuses on her breathing, on the gravel beneath her boots. “The order of that is strange to me, I admit.”

“Why so? You train to flick a dagger to its target. The grace with which you move is a pleasing side benefit.”

For a moment, she can’t see the ground in front of her, the sky.

But Solas is still speaking: “…you have chosen a path whose steps you do not dislike, because it leads to a destination you enjoy.”

Halani doesn’t want to ask, but she can’t help it: “You’re suggesting I’m graceful?” 

She tries to say it like a joke, but her voice is strained.

“No.”

She looks at him, and there is a pensive smile on his face.

“I am declaring it. It was not a subject for debate.”

She stares, struggling to form words, but before she can reply:

“Halani! Solas! Come quickly!”

Ahead of them, Cassandra is dismounting from her horse, unsheathing her sword. In the distance, in front of the gates of Redcliffe village, Halani sees the rift.

For once, she is grateful for it.


	10. Distance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much happens here, but I wanted to explore how Solas would def reassert a boundary after accidentally flirting with the Inquisitor.

The chaos of Redcliffe is a welcome distraction from Solas’s peculiar comment. Between the revelation about Grand Enchanter Fiona and the mages, and the addition of Dorian to their party, Halani has little time to dwell on his words.

Given the work waiting for them back at Skyhold, Cassandra has given them leave to stay in Redcliffe another night. And for once, they have the luxury of staying at an inn. The innkeeper was happy to give them a deal in thanks for their work in the Hinterlands, so their meager budget stretched far enough to secure them all private rooms.

Tonight, the inn is hosting a band of traveling musicians, and townfolk crowd the hall downstairs. Halani can hear the music and laughter and shouting from her room, where she lies on the bed, still in her road leathers and boots, staring up at the woodwork of the ceiling. Her stomach rumbles; she hasn’t eaten since breakfast. But she is reluctant to go downstairs amidst the shemlen and attempt to eat as they make merry.

She wonders, again, where Solas is.

She scoffs at herself, and her annoyance is enough to get her out of bed, out the door, and down the stairs. 

The musicians are playing in one corner, by the fire, and dozens of people fill the room, dancing and laughing. Halani looks to the table at the far wall, and is relieved to see familiar faces. Varric, with a feast spread before him, and Cassandra, picking at a pastry and looking very uncomfortable.

She slides down on the bench next to Varric.

“Can I have some of this?”

Varric pushes a plate of meat pastries in front of her. “Help yourself, Daggers.”

“Where’s Dorian?” she asks around a mouthful of food.

“He left for Skyhold earlier today,” Cassandra says. “He wanted to get a head start, since his army of servants will slow him down. We will likely arrive at the same time.”

_And where’s Solas?_ she wants to ask, but doesn’t.

He is probably in his room, reading one of his books. In the two days since his comment about her grace, he has barely spoken to her. Whatever new closeness they’d developed on the road seems to have vanished.

“There you are, Chuckles!” Varric shouts above the music. “Finally decided to join us for some dancing and drink?”

Solas, who has just walked in, inclines his head. “I was rather hoping for some food.”

He sits down next to Halani, and she slides in, her face warm. Their legs are almost touching; she hasn't been this close to him since they sparred.

Without looking at him, she passes the plate of pastries.

“So, what do you think, Chuckles? What does Alexius have up those fancy sleeves of his?”

“Now is hardly the appropriate place to talk about such matters,” Solas replies.

A barkeep passes by, and Varric flags him down. “A bottle of wine and four glasses, please.”

Cassandra looks sternly at him. “You know we have to be up at dawn tomorrow.”

“Oh, please, we’ve been working our asses off since we left for Orlais. We have time for one night of fun.”

She rolls her eyes, but when the barkeep returns with the wine, she pours a very full glass.

Halani pours herself some as well, and, to her surprise, so does Solas.

Varric raises his glass. “To the Inquisition!”

“To the Inquisition,” Cassandra echoes with considerably less enthusiasm. Solas doesn’t say anything, and takes a prim sip of his goblet.

Halani watches the room, at the people laughing and dancing with one another. Is this how spirits feel, watching the world of the living? It’s as if a pane of glass is between them. She remembers, with a strange sense of vertigo, that she used to be like them, enjoying a simple evening of song and dance with her friends. Enan’s face rises vividly to her mind—her dark and curly hair, and ringing laugh—Halani’s dearest friend from her clan. What is she doing now?

Halani watches as a boy who’s been nervously eyeing a girl all night finally gathers the courage to approach her, his friends behind him egging him on. She can’t hear his words, but he must be asking her to dance. She says yes, and, his face red, he brings her out onto the floor.

“Once, in my travels,” Solas murmurs beside her, “I met a friendly spirit who observed the dreams of village girls as love first blossomed in their adolescence. With subtlety, she steered them all to village boys with gentle hearts who would return their love with kindness.”

Halani looks at him, and he is smiling, watching the boy and girl dance.

“The Matchmaker, so I called her. That small village never knew its luck.”

“That’s lovely. I wish my clan had such a spirit.”

“Oh? Is there much heartbreak in Clan Lavellan?”

She is surprised, but shouldn’t be, that he remembers the name of her clan. “No, not exactly. But we rarely partner for love.”

Two days ago, in sunshine and breeze, perhaps he would have asked her what they did partner for. But now, from his renewed distance, he merely nods and smiles.

After he finishes his wine, he bids them goodnight.

* * *

Later, lying in bed in the strange new privacy of her room, Halani reflects that his distance is easier to comprehend than his intimacy. She remembers her observation from when they first met: he talked to her as if he was a blacksmith gauging a blade. His comment about grace was that, and no more.

The thought is oddly comforting. She falls asleep, and for once, she doesn’t dream of him.


	11. After Redcliffe

“It was honorable of you to accept the mages as allies of the Inquisition.”

Halani is bent over a desk, shuffling through papers. She looks up, and Solas is standing before her, hands clasped behind his back. She’s trying to remember if she’s ever seen him inside the Chantry before.

“Yes, well. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

“How so? I’m sure the others do not agree.”

She walks past him, towards the door, and he follows. It is not a conversation for the Chantry, with Leliana just paces away, probably eavedropping on everything they say.

When they are in the crisp, cold air outside, she turns to him and says, “I may not be a mage, but I know what it is to be despised and treated as less-than.”

He inclines his head towards the path, in an invitation to walk. She falls into step beside him.

“Because you are an elf?” As always, he says the word as if it does not apply to him.

“Yes. And… I suppose as an orphan adopted into a clan.” She still feels the old prickle of embarrassment when she mentions it. But Solas has heard the story before.

“Aren’t you afraid they will be corrupted?”

Halani mulls on this for a moment. “Can’t we all be corrupted? Mages can become abominations, yes, but it’s not like we don’t know how to deal with those.”

They pass through the second set of gates, and by wordless agreement they walk to the frozen lake.

“Any of us could harm our cause,” Halani continues, “despite our best intentions. Is Cassandra any less dangerous because she wields a sword, and not magic? Not to mention me, and this Mark.”

They reach the dock, and Solas stares out over the ice, brow furrowed in thought.

“I don’t understand,” he says, almost as if to himself.

“You don’t understand what?”

He turns to her, and she cannot read the expression in his eyes, which look nearly blue in the pale winter light. He searches her face, and she resists the urge to look away, even as the heat rises to her face.

“I cannot understand,” he says, “how you are so different from the others.”

Now she looks away, and laughs uncomfortably. “I’m not so different.”

“But you are.”

Halani looks at the ground, digs one boot into the snow. She can feel his gaze on her, as intense as a ray from the sun.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she finally says, looking back at him. But now he is staring back over the lake, at the forest in the distance.

“You and Dorian say you travelled through time,” he says, in an abrupt change of topic. “Could it have been an illusion, a trick of the Fade?”

“Why would anything in the Fade want to show us _that_?”

“A fair point.”

Suddenly, Halani is at Redcliffe castle, the rift at her back—Solas, turning to her one last time, running to the doors with Leliana—Leliana, overwhelmed by darkspawn—

“Halani.”

She returns to the moment, to the snow and ice and bright winter sky, and realizes that there are tears, cold on her face.

She wipes them away. “I’m sorry. It was… So terrible, the future we saw. I saw…”

He looks at her with an expression she’s never seen before—it almost looks like concern. Perhaps that is why she continues.

“I saw you die for us, Solas.”

His gaze shutters, and he moves back. Just like that, the barrier is back in place. “I am not surprised. Any one of our lives is cheap, compared to the horror of Corypheus succeeding.”

“I don’t consider your life cheap.”

“That is… kind of you. But ultimately unwise, given the price we will likely have to pay in order to win.” 

His tone is light, neutral, as if he’s talking about the weather. Seeing his detachment cracks something inside of her. She had seen the world choking with red lyrium, seen Solas in a prison cell with his eyes alight with some strange, poisonous magic. She had watched him die. Would he deny that he mattered? Was he saying, in some way, that no one mattered to him? That Halani didn’t?

Perhaps that is why she steps towards him, forcing him to face her.

“I had a life before this,” she says, and she hates that her voice is shaking. “But I can barely remember it. My life now is here. In Haven. On the road, in our camps, in the Hinterlands. I can barely remember the faces of the people in my clan. My world has become _this_.” She shakes her left hand at him, and it throws off a feeble green spark. Tears are burning in her eyes again, against her will. “The Inquisition, for better or for worse, has become my clan. So it is _not_ a game of chess, where I will willingly sacrifice any one of our lives for a victory.”

Solas has been looking at her with something—regret? Grief?—in his eyes, his lips parted as if he will speak. But then he shakes his head, almost imperceptibly, and straightens his back, his hands coming to clasp behind his back again.

“I am sorry.” His voice is cool. “I did not mean to offend you.”

Again, that cursed composure.

“You did not offend me, _hahren_.”

As she had once before, when they sparred in those early days, she says it like an insult.

His eyebrows raise at the word, but he does not rise to the bait. He inclines his head in a bow, and leaves her standing by the lake, wiping away her tears.

* * *

When she returns to her hut that evening, after another endless meeting in the war room, she sees something glimmering at the threshold of her door. Two daggers, keen and polished, their silver almost purple in the dusk.

She lifts them, tests their weight in her hands. And sees the note that was underneath them.

In beautiful, careful script:

_Banal nadas, da’len_.

Nothing is inevitable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In each of these conversations, I’m trying to show how Solas is grappling with his own mistakes, as well as his dawning realization that this world he must destroy is also full of meaning—and that the Inquisitor shows wisdom that he never expected to find. Kind of a precursor to his conversation with the Inquisitor about her “changing everything.”
> 
> Their conversation is also about what he sees his role as—it seems like from everything he says in the game/Trespasser that he expects to die in exchange for tearing down the Veil. So of course he’s insisting that caring about individual lives is idealistic/short-sighted. Halani is trying to tell him that he (and the others) mean something to her. And so of course he rejects that - deep down, he's frightened to realize he does care about them (and her specifically).
> 
> "Banal nadas" is lifted from his conversation with the Nightmare demon—I thought the meaning also fit poignantly here.
> 
> As for "da'len" - in addition to him turning her use of "hahren" back on her, IMO it's appropriate given the stage their relationship is at. He knows he cares about her - he's trying to put it in terms of mentorship or guidance to himself. Lethallan is a different thing entirely, and he doesn't accept her as an equal till after she faces down Corypheus and survives the fall of Haven.
> 
> Speaking of which - we’re almost to Skyhold, aka Solas finally accepting that his feelings are real, and that the Inquisitor is worthy of them. So things will progress a bit more quickly now!
> 
> (Sorry for all the analysis, probably unnecessary haha. I've just been geeking out over my psychoanalyzing these two!)


	12. In Your Heart Shall Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This point in the game will always be my favorite. Such masterful storytelling by the Bioware team.

Halani moves through a void of wind and snow, her fingers numb, her face burning from the cold. Just one more step, she tells herself—just one more. She hears wolves howling, but is too tired to be afraid. A black shape against the snow—a campfire. She limps towards it, puts her hand above the coals. Still warm.

Hope gives her strength. She moves onward with new resolve. They made it—they’re alive—they’re somewhere ahead.

By the time she hears their voices, sees the red glow of firelight, her vision is spinning so badly she thinks it’s a dream. The last thing she remembers is the sound of wolves, baying in the distance.

* * *

She wakes up, warm, _alive_ —bundled in furs, a soothing hand on her forehead. Mother Giselle.

She gives Halani a cup of water. After she finishes gulping it down, she registers voices—Cullen, Leliana, Cassandra. Their words are inaudible but it is clear they are arguing. She suddenly feels so very tired.

“Our leaders struggle,” Mother Giselle says softy, “because of what we survivors witnessed. We saw our defender stand, and fall. And now we have seen her return.”

Halani sits up, and winces at the pain that shoots through her head. “That’s not what happened.”

“But the people know what they saw,” Mother Giselle replies, her voice gentle. “Or perhaps what they needed to see. The Maker is both in the moment and in how it is remembered. Can we truly know the heavens are not with us?”

Halani just shakes her head. Images flash through her mind. Corypheus standing before her, wreathed in ash and snow—those unearthly eyes and twisted body, his terrible voice… The familiar mountain she had gazed at so many times, collapsing—then waking, somehow still alive, with this new energy of the Mark crackling in her palm… She holds back a shiver.

Even if she isn’t an instrument of the Maker’s will, it is clear she has treaded into the territory of the gods.

Mother Giselle smiles at her, her eyes full of compassion.

And then she starts to sing.

One by one, the others join. Halani stands, alarm prickling at the back of her neck. The people of Haven—the very same people she has eaten beside, drilled with, shared drinks with around the fire—come to kneel in front of her, singing the words of this foreign hymn.

Her chest suddenly feels tight, her clothes too warm. She looks to Cullen, Cassandra, Leliana, a plea in her eyes. But she is unnerved by the expression on their faces—reverent, unseeing. Halani has never felt so alone.

When Solas appears, she can’t keep the relief from her face.

“A word,” he says.

She follows him, away from the camp and into the darkness.

He lights a torch with magefire. She takes a moment to breathe in the mountain air, and wraps her cloak more securely around herself to ward off the bite of the wind.

When Solas turns back to look at her, the blue light casts the planes of his face into unfamiliar dimensions. And she can’t remember if she’s ever seen this expression before, a strange mix of eagerness and resolve.

“The humans have not raised one of our people so high for ages beyond counting. The faith is hard-won, lethallan, worthy of pride, save one detail.”

_Lethallan_. He has never called her such before.

“The threat Corypheus wields, the Orb he carried—it is ours. Corypheus used the Orb to open the Breach. Unlocking it must have caused the explosion that destroyed the conclave. We must find out how he survived. And we must prepare for their reaction, when they learn the orb is one of our people.”

Part of her reels at this revelation, and she suddenly remembers that conversation long ago in his hut, when he asked her about Dalish legends. The other part of her is shocked by his use of _our_.

“Such things were foci,” Solas continues, “said to channel power from our gods. Some were dedicated to specific members of our pantheon. All that remains are references in ruins, and faint visions of memory in the Fade, echoes of a dead empire. But however Corypheus came to it, the orb is elven, and with it, he threatens the heart of human faith.”

“You’re right,” she finally manages, struggling through both her exhaustion and the weight of these revelations, the strange new intimacy that Solas has offered. “They will find some way to blame us. They always do.”

“It is unfortunate, but we must be above suspicion to be seen as valued allies. Faith in you is shaping this moment, but needs room to grow.”

Halani doesn’t understand what he means until later. On the long trek north, in the harsh wind and snow and blinding sun, she has time to reflect. Solas doesn’t believe she is the chosen of Andraste any more than she does. But he sees this as an opportunity—to marshal the Inquisition, to solidify their support.

It is, she reflects, remembering his use of “lethallan” and “ours”—very elven. The difference between the religions of humans and the People, Halani realizes, is that shemlen have the promise of redemption. The elves have nothing but a dogged determination to survive.

So, survive she would.

When she sees Skyhold, magnificent in the midday sun, her heart drops. Whether in exhilaration or fear, she cannot tell.


	13. Skyhold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, some development in their relationship! Sorry if it's a bit disjointed, wrote it in the wee hours of the morning and wanted to post right away.

It doesn’t take long for Skyhold to feel like home, even though the wind scours through the open walls, and the air is spicy with the scent of freshly cut timber as the construction crew works on repairs.

Halani loves her chambers, and keeps the balcony doors open despite the chill, burning a ridiculous amount of firewood to compensate. She’d felt claustrophobic in her hut at Haven. Now the wind moves against her face at night as she falls asleep, and she can watch the stars from her bed. She wakes to unearthly sunrises, the snowy peaks of the mountains glowing with the pink light of dawn.

Of course, she misses Haven—the candlewax-and-book scent of the Chantry, a combination which she’d never before smelled. The warped planks of the ceiling of her hut, which had become so familiar. Adan’s makeshift apothecary, the bundles of herbs and neatly arranged flasks on the table. Their humble tavern, Flissa humming to herself as she filled mugs from the cask. The frozen lake, and the little nugs always running about.

But lying in her bed, surrounded by sunlight, it doesn’t feel as painful. There’s something about the stone walls of a fortress that makes her feel safe, makes everything _real_. Makes the Inquisition real. The sword, nearly as long as her body, that she had hoisted on the stairs… Her title, so strange when she hears others say it: Inquisitor.

Cassandra treats her differently now, and the other advisers. There is a new formality in the way they speak to her in the war room, a deference that makes her uncomfortable. Blackwall, too. But the rest—Varric, Cole, Sera, Iron Bull—treat her the same as before. Not that she knows the latter three very well yet, but if they think anything of her new position, they don’t show it.

Solas… is another category entirely.

On the road, or in meetings, he addresses her as Inquisitor, his tone as crisp and cool as everyone else. But when they are alone, it is lethallan. She cannot bring herself to address him in kind, but each time he says it, happiness warms her like a fire. Somehow, Halani had finally crossed one of his invisible barriers.

One morning, Solas asks her if she would like to help him map the perimeter of Skyhold. He wants to mark useful areas, where herbs grow and where trees may be cut down for timber.

As she follows him down a forest path, she finally braves the topic.

“Solas, I was wondering… Why do you call me lethallan?”

He is silent, and for a moment she thinks he didn’t hear her.

“Why shouldn’t I?” he replies at last, and his tone is light.

“It’s just, well, before. You didn’t seem to feel much kinship with…” _Me._ “The Dalish.” 

She sneaks a glance at him, and he is looking downward, his brow furrowed in thought.

“I suppose,” he says, “I have learned that we are not so different as I once thought. Forgive me. I have had… unpleasant experiences with the Dalish.”

She waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t.

“May I ask,” she finally ventures, “what kinds of elves you consider your kin?”

After a pause, Solas says, “I have spent most of my life alone.”

It is not quite an answer, but Halani feels she has trespassed far enough. Clearly it is a difficult story, and she will not force him to share it.

“This path,” she says, changing topics. “I wonder who walked here, and how long ago. How is it that it still lasts, even after all these years?” 

“An interesting question. I suppose the animals keep the paths that we make, even after we’re gone.” 

“Have you seen anything about Skyhold’s history in the Fade?”

She thinks it an innocuous subject, but he takes a long time to answer.

“I can only catch glimpses here and there as I sleep. It is a place full of pain—it is difficult to linger there in dreams.”

Halani tries to think of something appropriate to say, in a conversation that has suddenly become so heavy. Then Solas stops to note a stand of pines on the scroll he is carrying, and she is relieved.

“If you don’t wish me to call you lethallan,” he says as he marks the scroll, “I will not.” 

“No! It’s not that. It’s just very—” The word slips out of her mouth. “—intimate.” 

Now her face is hot. But he doesn’t look up from his scroll. And he turns and continues walking as if she hasn’t said anything. Is she imagining the stiffness in his posture? She did not think she had the power to discomfit him.

“We will have to go to Adamant fortress soon,” he says, and she is glad he doesn’t probe her on her choice of words. “If we are victorious, what do you plan to do about the Wardens?”

“And here I was enjoying our lovely stroll, happily avoiding thoughts of the unpleasantness ahead.” She smiles at him, and is relieved that he smiles back.

“It is a difficult choice. But it will have to be made. Better to consider it now, before the heat of battle.”

“True. I have been thinking about it, and gathering thoughts from the others. It depends how far this corruption has spread. Perhaps they can be salvaged still.”

“A noble thought.” His tone is exquisitely neutral, and she knows him well enough to know it means he disagrees.

“The Wardens are still considered heroes after the Blight. It is hard to imagine the Inquistion— _me_ —condemning them. It feels like hubris, to think that I should have a say in the matter.”

“Hubris,” he muses. “A mysterious word. What sets it apart from mere pride?”

Solas stops again to note a patch of royal elfroot, and kneels to carefully uproot one, which he puts in his sack, probably to plant in the garden.

“Hubris is... arrogance. When pride goes too far. Pride can be good, sometimes. It helps you to be brave, to live up to your expectation of yourself.”

Halani hasn’t realized this before—the realization comes as she speaks it. She has spent so long fighting against her pride, seeing it as the poison of her youth that had made her so reckless and insecure.

But now, having had to take on the mantle of leadership for the Inquisition—she realizes it has served her well. It is pride that keeps her up late at night, poring over maps and inventories. It is pride that pushes her to drill every morning, rain or shine. And it is pride that makes her seek counsel from the others, to be sure her decisions are far-sighted and fair.

“I used to worry about being proud,” she says, voicing her thoughts. “I was a reckless, arrogant girl, and it caused a lot of problems. For me, and for my clan.”

“Oh?”

“We talked about it, I think, back in Haven. I was so insecure about being a burden to my clan that I made sure to excel, to prove that I wasn’t only the equal of the other children, but better.”

“I’m sure that made you very popular,” Solas says, smiling.

Halani laughs. “Yes, so popular that I found spiders in my tent every week. Eventually, I learned. My Keeper… She brought me to the alienage in Wycome. And she told me that power should never be wielded to oppress others. I took that lesson to heart.”

“Now that you are Inquisitor, with a reach extending all across Thedas—do you still believe you can have power without oppressing others?”

Suddenly, Halani remembers their first real conversation, when Solas had joined her at her firepit one night. 

_Power creates fear just as surely as the sun creates warmth_ , he had said. No _matter how nobly one wields it._

“I… don’t know. I haven’t thought about that before. I’d like to say we aren’t oppressing anyone. But then again I have a biased view, as the one at the very top.”

“As always, you are wise beyond your years.”

She looks at him, and is surprised at his expression—oddly intent, searching her face as if he is looking for the answer to some question.

Halani has to look away. “What do _you_ think?” she asks to the ground.

“From what I have observed, people with power always, despite their best intentions, oppress others. Because what is power, if not making decisions for others by force?”

She mulls on that for a while. They reach another stand of pines, which Solas marks.

“I think that’s enough for today,” he says, tucking his scroll into his satchel.

As they walk back to Skyhold, she ventures to ask: “Your question about pride. I suppose your mother must have had a strong opinion about it, to name you so?”

His only answer is a smile. Halani stores it away with all of the other questions she’s learned not to ask him.

When they reach the rotunda, Solas puts his bag on the desk, and pulls out the scroll, and the elfroot. He already seems absorbed in the task.

“Thank you for asking me to join you,” Halani says. “I enjoyed the distraction.”

“You are welcome, Inquisitor,” Solas says, busied with spreading out the map and placing weights at each corner. “I was grateful for the company.”

He has put up that barrier again, erasing the intimacy of their conversation in the woods, and Halani can’t help but push against it. “I will get back to my duties. Dareth shiral, lethallin.” 

At that, he looks up, his eyes wide, and she is gratified by the reaction.

“Inquisitor—you have something in your hair.”

He steps around the desk, towards her, and raises his hand to the side of her face.

Halani’s heart starts pounding. She stands still, barely daring to breathe.

Solas brushes something—a leaf—from her hair. She expects him to step away, to reassert some kind of formality.

But he pauses, his hand still on her face. His fingers are cool against her skin, and Halani, once again, feels her face grow hot.

He looks at her. Truly looks at her—his eyes scanning her face, his lips parted. And his hand slides down her jaw, to her neck. His thumb drifts down to the hollow of her collarbone. 

She can’t breathe—can barely think—and her eyes involuntarily close.

“Solas…” 

Halani feels him pull away his hand, and she opens her eyes. He is already turned away, his back to her, marking something on his scroll.

Confused—her heart racing—she turns and walks to the great hall, barely seeing where she is going.

“What’s wrong, Daggers? You lost?” Varric.

Halani realizes she’s been standing, sightlessly, in the middle of the great hall.

She mumbles something incoherent, and walks quickly to her chambers. She goes to the balcony and stares out at the sky, which is now quickly darkening with dusk. The cold air clears her head, focuses her thoughts.

Halani sees the moment over and over again: the look in his eyes as he touched her face, his fingers in her hair and his thumb at the hollow of her neck—a strangely possessive gesture. The blood that rose to her skin at his touch.

She knows she’s attracted to him—she’s known since the beginning. The tenderness and admiration came later, but still she was at peace with it. She learned to be content with his friendship, and resigned herself to the fact that he did not share her feelings.

But now… Things have changed. Her careful solicitude towards him, the carefully constructed line she drew between them—it has dissipated like mist in the sun.

His friendship, Halani realizes, is no longer enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the old "there's something in your hair" trick.


	14. The Fade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted a version of this yesterday and realized it was very hollow. It's hard sticking to the scene we all know and love - hopefully I managed to bring to life a dialogue we've probably read 1000000 times before, ha.

They walk through Haven, and a light snow is drifting down.

“Why here?”

“Haven is familiar,” Solas replies, leading her up the hill to the Chantry. “It will always be important to you.”

“We’ve talked about that already,” Halani says. “That home is about the people, not the place.”

“Even so. It truly was a haven for us in those early days, amidst all of the chaos of the Breach, was it not?”

He leads her into the Chantry, and she mulls on _us_. If he had thought Haven a home, he’d given no hint of it then.

They descend the mildewy stairs to the prison. The bitter smell of stone and earth brings her back to that first day, waking in chains, her left hand burning with strange new magic.

“I sat beside you while you slept, studying the Anchor. I tried every test you could imagine, searched the Fade, yet I found nothing. Cassandra suspected duplicity. She threatened to have me executed as an apostate if I didn’t produce results.”

Halani can’t help but smile at the image. “That sounds like her. But…” She studies his profile in the torchlight. “Solas, I asked to know more about you.”

“This is about me,” he says softly, and leads her back up the stairs, out into the sunlight.

“You were never going to wake up,” Solas continues. “How could you, a mortal sent physically through the Fade? I was frustrated, frightened. The spirits I might have consulted had been driven away by the Breach. Although I wished to help, I had no faith in Cassandra, nor she in me. I was ready to flee.”

“The Breach threatened the whole world. Where did you plan to go?”

“Someplace far away, where I might study the Breach before its effects reached me.” Solas smiles wryly. “I never said it was a good plan.”

He turns from her, to that terrible green chasm in the sky. “I told myself: one more attempt to close the rifts. I tried and failed. No ordinary magic would affect them. I watched the rifts expand and grow, resigned myself to flee, and then…”

Suddenly, Halani is on the mountain path on that first day. The strange green light rippling in front of her, the corpses of demons at her feet, turning to ash on the snow. Solas, grabbing her wrist with a grip so tight it was painful, and aiming it at the rift. The heat that gathered in her palm and buzzed up her arm—then the strange tingle of relief she felt as she closed it.

“You had sealed it with a gesture,” Solas says, and she is back in Haven, the light snow drifting against her face. “And right then… I felt the whole world change.”

He turns to face her, and she cannot read his expression.

“Felt… the whole world change?”

“A figure of speech.” 

His voice has gone cool, remote. And Halani, knowing what she now knows—the way he had looked at her as he touched her face in the rotunda, how his eyes had lowered briefly to her mouth—takes a step towards him.

“I’m aware of the metaphor,” Halani says. “I’m more interested in _felt_.”

For once, he doesn’t step away. “You change… Everything.”

He holds her gaze for a moment, some question on his face—and something like pain. And he looks away.

And Halani grabs his face with both hands and kisses him.

Solas is unmoving beneath her lips, his whole body rigid. She may as well be kissing a statue. Halani pulls away, fear and embarrassment tightening her throat, burning her face. What a foolish, foolish mistake.

But then he grabs her shoulders and kisses her. And kisses her again, with so much passion she can feel her heart pounding against his chest where they touch.

He pulls away, and his breathing is ragged.

“We shouldn’t. It isn’t right. Not even here.”

Halani tries regain her breath, to remember where they are, how they got here. “What do you mean, even here?”

She looks around. Haven. Haven, which is currently a ruin buried under ice and snow.

“Where did you think we were?”

“This isn’t real.”

“That’s a matter of debate,” Solas replies, smiling. “Probably best discussed after you— _wake up_.”

* * *

As soon as Halani wakes up in her bed, she races downstairs to the rotunda. Whether in exhilaration or frustration, or some heady mix of both, she can’t tell. 

She couldn’t have imagined that kiss. It had the clarity and crispness of the waking world. Besides, the Solas in her dreams is usually more—expressive.

But there is only one way to find out. She flings the door to the rotunda open, and Solas’s back is to her, as he fills in an outline with crimson paint. He turns around at the sound of the door opening.

“Sleep well?” he asks, and his tone is impossible to parse.

So it _was_ real. Fresh exhilaration thrums in her chest.

“I had some odd dreams,” Halani says, slowly. “Very odd dreams.” She steps towards him, and his posture straightens, his hands coming behind his back.

And she can’t resist trying to fracture that annoying composure.

“I liked how it ended, though.”

Solas forces a laugh, and looks away. “I apologize. The kiss was impulsive and ill-considered.” He meets her eyes again, his expression serious. “I should not have encouraged it.”

Halani’s heart sinks. Gods, was it always to be this dance between them?

“You did kiss me back. If I’m pressuring you…”

“No, you’re not. I am perhaps pressuring myself.”

She looks at him in question.

“It has been a long time,” he continues. “And things have always been… Easier for me in the Fade.”

He turns to put his paints away, and his back to her, he says: “I am not certain this is the best idea. It could leave to trouble.”

Halani gathers her courage and says: “I’m willing to take that chance, if you are.”

He turns around, and finally, he is the Solas she had seen in the Fade, his guard down, his expression open, almost—was she imagining it?—desperate.

“I… maybe, yes. If I could take a little time to think. There are—considerations.”

“Take all of the time you need,” she says, and almost means it.

“Thank you,” Solas says. “I am not often thrown by things that happen in dreams. But I am reasonably certain we are awake now, and if you wish to discuss anything, I welcome it.”

“I… I did have one question. When we were at Adamant… What did the Nightmare say to you? The words he used, I didn't know them.” Besides one: _harellan_.

Solas’s expression shutters, and Halani curses herself for pushing him back into his invisible fortress.

“He said that my cause is doomed to fail.”

She remembers his response to the Nightmare, the same words he had written on that note to her, so long ago in Haven. _Banal nadas_. Nothing is inevitable.

“I see. Thank you for sharing.”

“You are welcome. Now, if you’ll excuse me—I need to work on deciphering some documents.”

After Halani leaves him in the rotunda, she reflects on his choice of words. _My_ cause, not _our_.

This evidence that he still holds himself apart from them—from her—stings. But even that cannot ruin her happiness.

Solas had kissed her, even if it was in the Fade.


	15. Return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very short scene - this post-Wisdom dialogue always seemed to be very important, leading up to the Balcony Scene(TM). What, Solas, actually emotionally relying on the Inquisitor for once??

It has been a month they went to the Exalted Plains, and Solas has not yet come back. Halani almost doesn’t think he will return. The look on his face after Wisdom died—she had never seen him show that kind of pain.

But then one day, just as she walks down the stairs to the stables—there he is, walking through the gates, and her heart starts pounding.

Halani tries to keep her step measured, her expression neutral, as she descends to meet him.

“Inquisitor,” he says.

Her heart sinks at the formality of his tone. She’s been keeping her distance since their not-kiss, giving him time to think. Perhaps, in his time away, he built up those formidable walls again. 

“Solas. Are you…”

“It hurts. It always does. But I will survive.”

Words seem inadequate. “Thank you,” she says, “for coming back.”

“You were a true friend. You did everything you could to help.”

The look on his face—Halani has never seen it before. Gratitude.

“I could hardly abandon you now,” Solas says, his voice soft. 

Halani wants to pull him to her—to hold him, to ease that weary look in his eyes. But she knows she cannot. So, she simply says: “The next time you have to mourn, you don’t need to be alone.”

At that, he looks down. “It’s been so long since I could trust someone.”

“I know.”

“I’ll work on it,” he says. And he straightens his back, hiking his travel bag more securely over his shoulder, half-turning away.

But then he turns back to her and says, his tone unmistakably sincere: “Thank you.”


	16. The Balcony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, at long last - the balcony scene.

“Inquisitor—do you have a moment?”

Halani has just entered the rotunda, on her way to get the latest reports from Leliana. She was planning on sneaking by Solas silently, as she always did these days, in her resolution to give him space.

“Yes, of course,” she says, and tries to keep any hint of eagerness from her voice. “What is it?”

Solas walks past her, to the door, and inclines his head for her to follow. She does, curious and confused, as they go down the hall towards the throne.Surely he wasn’t…

He continues walking, unmistakably heading for her quarters. He opens the door, and then belatedly turns to her. “Ah. May I?”

Words fail her. She just nods, her heart pounding.

They walk up the stairs in silence, as Halani tells herself again and again: _Do not have hope. This doesn’t mean anything. He will probably tell me he isn’t interested, and that’s that._

They enter her chambers. She studiously avoids looking at the bed, and follows him out onto the balcony.

“What were you like?” Solas asks abruptly. “Before the Anchor. Has it affected you, changed you in any way—your mind, your morals? Your…” He pauses. “Spirit?” 

Halani rubs her left hand, mulling over the question. She tries to cast her mind back to Before, when her main concerns were whether or not her clan had enough game to eat, or if she could solve some quarrel without knives getting involved. 

Then Keeper Deshanna had asked her to go and witness the meeting at the Conclave, and then…

“I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve had scarce time to reflect the past months. I’m sure I’ve changed since the Breach, but I attributed it to all of the new challenges and responsibilities. I didn’t realize the Mark could have affected my…” She echoes his word. “Spirit.”

“That’s an excellent point. And perhaps the Mark would have no effect on your character. It is impossible to know, as we have no other example of such a thing happening before.”

Halani is puzzled by his expression. It is almost eager, as if he is grateful for her answer. As if he wants it to be true.

“Why do you ask?”

“You show a wisdom I have not seen since…” Solas stumbles on the word, and Halani is again struck by this change in him. She has never seen him anything less than eloquent, as if reciting words he’d memorized from a book.

“Since my deepest journeys into the Fade,” he finishes. “You are not what I expected.”

“And what did you expect?”

“Most people are… Predictable.”

Halani laughs. “I seem to recall you telling me I _was_ predictable. Do you remember? After we went to Orlais. You said I always did what I thought was right, no matter how much it cost me.” 

Halani is embarrassed, a heartbeat later, to reveal that she remembers every word he says to her.

But Solas doesn’t remark on it. “That is still true. But your choices—what you think is right—are not as predictable as I had thought.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have shown a subtlety in your actions, a wisdom that goes against everything I expected. If the Dalish could raise someone with a spirit like yours… Have I misjudged them?”

For as long as she’s known him, she cannot remember Solas asking her a question like this: one where he truly doesn’t seem to know the answer.

“That depends,” Halani replies, “on what you judged them to be before.” She turns to look at the mountains, placing her hands on the railing. “Though we like to hold ourselves above the humans, I cannot say that we are any wiser than them. But we do try to keep the old ways alive.”

She remembers, suddenly, that her clan is now dead. “Did.”

“I… I heard about that. Ir abelas, lethallan.”

She looks at the distant mountain peak until she is sure she will not cry. “It’s fine. Or, at least it is for now. I don’t think I’ll be able to truly grieve until all of this is over.”

Solas is silent, and comes to stand beside her at the railing, joining her in her contemplation of the mountains and sky.

“I’m sorry,” Halani says, when her emotions are back under control. “What was the question again?”

“Don’t be sorry. It was nothing of importance. I just wanted to compliment you. Most people act with so little understanding of the world. But… not you.”

She turns to face him, and stills at the expression on his face. It is… It is the same one she must look at him with. Admiration—desire, bordering on anguish.

Halani struggles to connect his questions to the subtext, to the way he is looking at her as if—finally—he is saying _yes_.

“Solas, what does this have to do with…” _Us._ She leaves the word unspoken.

“It means I have not forgotten the kiss.”

Her heart starts to race. But he doesn’t move towards her. He stands there, arms at his sides, looking at her with that anguished expression on his face. And so she takes a step to him, and another, until she is close enough to see the freckles on his face.

Halani leans up, until her mouth is scant inches from his. But she does not kiss him. For once, she wants him to initiate something. She is so tired of chasing him, of pushing against his boundaries until he lets her in.

Solas’s eyes search her face, and she can almost hear his internal battle, his desire warring with—what? What was it, that made him so afraid?

And he shakes his head, almost imperceptibly, and turns from her.

Gods curse it—she would not let him walk away again. Halani grabs his arm. “Solas. Don’t go.”

“It would be kinder in the long run,” he says, and she cannot see his face. “But losing you would…”

And he turns around, and pulls her to him. And she realizes—though Solas says the Fade is richer—how inadequate their kiss there was, compared to _this_. His mouth hot against hers—his tongue, gods, his teeth—his hands gripping her waist as he presses her against him.

After a moment that seems to stretch into eternity, Solas pulls away.

“Ar lath ma, vhenan,” he says.

Halani can barely process the words until he is already gone.

_I love you._

She stands there for a long time, not feeling the chill of the air. She had once thought he wanted friendship—and then she learned he desired her. Now, he has revealed that he loves her.

_And do you love him_? she asks herself. 

When she answers it, truly, honestly—some new emotion tightens her chest. It is happiness—bliss, even. But not only that.

Halani remembers the look in his eyes as kissed her. Grief. And as she stares off sightlessly to the mountains, she cannot tell whether her heart is racing from joy—or from fear.


	17. The Winter Palace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long! Holidays etc. 
> 
> Should be pretty quick from here on out. Sadly, we don't have much left to go. T_T

Halani stands on the balcony and gazes out over the gardens of the Winter Palace. She can hear the tinkling laughter of noblewomen carried on the balmy breeze, the murmur of their companions’ voices. For a moment, she imagines herself winding through the hedges, with no more care in the world than suitors and clothes and social standing. To be so carefree… Even after their victory tonight, she can’t help but be exhausted by all the work that lies ahead.

“I’m not surprised to find you out here.”

Solas. She smiles to see him, and he comes to stand by her at the rail.

“Thoughts?” he asks.

Halani sighs. “Worrying about the journey back, already. And that mage, Morrigan. I wonder what the empress means by sending her with us.”

“True. There is much work ahead of us. For now, though, you should be happy with what you’ve accomplished here tonight.”

Halani smiles at him. “You think I did well?” She knows he does, but wants to hear him say it. Though she is far from the early days, where she always felt as if she had to pass a test with him, his approval is still gratifying.

“Yes. You did.” Solas smiles back, and slides one hand over on the rail to lace his fingers through hers.

His touch still makes her giddy, as breath-stealing as their first kiss. She turns her face to the gardens to hide the silly grin on her face.

“You seem more comfortable here than I expected,” she muses, glancing over at him, noting the ease of his posture as he leans on the rail.

“I have seen countless such displays in my journeys in the Fade. The powerful have always been the same. Only the costumes change.”

“I heard, when they announced us… They called you an elven serving man.” She can’t help but laugh at the image. Solas is anything but subservient.

He smiles. “Indeed,” he says lightly. “It is a blessing in disguise. I’m sure part of your victory tonight was because these Orlesians underestimated you.”

“True. I can’t tell if they were more offended at the sight of Varric or of us, dressed in finery and drinking their fancy wine.”

“And eating those delicious frilly cakes,” Solas remarks, startling a laugh out of her.

“Do you think we could persuade an Orlesian baker to come back to Skyhold with us?”

“A fantastic idea.”

Perhaps it’s the wine giving her courage, or the romance of the music drifting out through the doors, but Halani leans closer to him and rests her head on his shoulder. She is half-afraid he will draw away. But he doesn’t.

“It was… fascinating, watching you tonight,” Solas murmurs into her hair.

“What do you mean?”

“For someone who grew up in the wilderness, you seemed remarkably in your element. Charming the nobility, even as you slunk through the shadows and scaled garden trellises.” Solas begins tracing lines on the back of her hand, and she shivers. “A wolf amongst sheep.”

“It was rather thrilling, in a way I didn’t expect.”

“Oh?”

“I thought I’d hate the pretense of it. But it’s rather… sensual, I suppose. To wear a mask, to play the Game. The intrigue.”

“Yes. This kind of power is more subtle than that you wield on the battlefield. But no less potent.”

“And…” Solas moves his hands to her waist, turning her to face him. “You’re right. It is rather sensual.” 

His eyes lower to her lips, but he doesn’t kiss her.

“Come, before the band stops playing,” he whispers. “Dance with me.”

His touch light on the small of her back, he draws her away from the rail. And he surprises her again, with this easy grace—where had he learned how to dance like this?

Halani leans her face into his neck, breathing in the scent of him. Cedar and earth and woodsmoke and something she cannot name, that brings to mind a twilit forest, snow in the shadows beneath the trees.

It’s been a month since they kissed on her balcony, but Solas has not yet come to her bed. She presses herself tighter against him in an invitation, and leans up to kiss him.

He kisses her back, lingeringly, sweetly—but draws away. And he bows, as elegant as any of the courtiers inside. “Inquisitor,” he says, the smile on his lips belying the formal title. 

Solas offers her his arm, and they reenter the ballroom. By tacit agreement, they move away from each other as soon as they are in the presence of others.

Halani spends the rest of the evening dancing with the many eager noblemen and women who dare to ask. Solas, of course, does not dance with her again. But she feels his gaze on her as she moves through the ballroom, and smiles a secret smile to herself.


	18. Arbor Blessing

Halani and Solas walk at dusk through the snowy woods of Emprise du Lion, gathering arbor blessing for the apothecary back at Skyhold. For a moment, she allows herself to forget what lies ahead—the forces gathering in the Arbor Wilds, the looming confrontation with Corypheus.

As they wind between the trees, the light gold against all the snow, Solas slows, then stops. Halani turns to face him curiously.

“Vhenan.”

She has heard him say it so many times, yet each time it makes her catch her breath. How could he, always so guarded, say the word with such conviction? She can barely muster the shemlen word “love.”

And yet, when he kissed her, it was always under the stars or sun, secret moments like these as they foraged for herbs or hunted. At Skyhold, when he slipped up into her chambers after the others had gone to bed, he became as chaste as a friend. 

But she remembers the wards on his hut in Haven, the way he used to draw away from her as they spoke, and knows that even this closeness is hard-won.

“Solas?”

He smiles at her. “It’s just—with the snow, the sunlight—you. It’s almost as if we are walking through the Fade. I wanted to savor the moment, fix it in my mind.”

She steps to him, laces her fingers through his. “You speak as if you expect me to disappear tomorrow.” Her tone is light but she can’t keep the question from it.

He drops his gaze. “The future is far from certain.”

Here it is again—the grief and regret always behind his words, behind every kiss they shared. Why does it make her so afraid?

She brings her hands to his face, to pull him in for a kiss. But he gently draws her wrists down and takes a step back. 

“I thought at first I was merely attracted to you. I didn’t trust the feeling… I’ve been apart from others for so long.”

“Oh, so you’d fall for any elf that gave you half a glance?” She says it like a joke, but she has suspected as much in darker moments.

“No. I was worried that I wanted you for foolish reasons.”

“Like what?” She tries not to sound too curious.

“You know I admire you greatly. And you know that we are similar in many ways. But while I took so many years to master my pride, here you are, barely past childhood—”

Halani scoffs.

“—with already such self-control and integrity. Wisdom,” he nearly whispers, and his expression when he looks at her is one of awe.

Her stomach drops at the intensity of the look.

“I wondered if I only wanted to have you,” he continues, “because it would make me feel as I had finally become wise too.”

She catches her breath at the words _wanted to have you._

Halani’s voice is rough when she says: “I don’t understand, first of all, why you think you’re so much older than I am. Second, I have not mastered my pride. This whole time, I’ve been questioning whether or not my attraction to you was because I needed to convince you I was, I don’t know, worth admiring. You’re so… Discerning. I wanted to impress you, because I knew how hard-won it would be. In other words, it was out of pride.”

At that, he laughs.

“Oh, vhenan. I suppose it would be foolish to think that love could be disentangled from the root of our deepest fears. The two have corresponding depth.” 

“That is,” she says after a pause, “very true.”

Halani meets his eyes, which are still warm with his smile, and he stills at the look in hers. She’s gripped by sudden daring. She takes a long moment to eye him up and down, and takes a step closer to him. 

And another.

So close she can feel the heat of him pressing against her entire body. So close, that when she tilts her head up to his, their breath mingles in the cold air.

“Well,” she says, her voice nearly a whisper, “now that you’ve decided it’s not foolish to want me…”

She lets her gaze fall to his mouth, and sees his throat move as he swallows. 

“Then why…” She rises up on her toes, her lips almost touching his.

“…won’t you fuck me?”

She hears his breathing quicken, roughen. He is looking somewhere above her head, his jaw clenched.

“Because I’ve thought about it so many times, Solas.”

At the sound of his name, he nearly flinches.

“From the very beginning. You asked at the hot spring if I disliked you. The truth is, I wanted you so badly…”

She lifts a hand, places it gently, so gently, on his face, her thumb finding his lips. He is as still and frozen as ice.

“I could hardly stand to be around you.”

She slips her thumb into his mouth. He closes his eyes, and his chest rises with a shaky breath.

And she rises on her toes and slowly, deliberately, bites his bottom lip.

His composure finally breaks. He grabs her shoulders, and pushes her against a tree, his forearm across her chest and his other hand pinning her wrists behind her. He presses his body against hers. And oh gods, against her stomach, at her navel, she can _feel_ …

The bark scrapes her hands deliciously. She looks up at him, tries to lean in for a kiss. He pushes her down, even more tightly against the tree, his arm shifting up to press at the base of her neck, forcing her breath to come faster. 

His eyes move between her eyes and her lips.

“If I _fucked_ you,” he murmurs with cold precision, and her whole body trembles, “I would never stop, even as the world fell apart around us.”

Before she can gather her wits to say, “That sounds rather nice,” he takes a step back, through the Fade, and is several paces away, kneeling down to pick up their basket of arbor blessing. Before she can process it, he is already walking back towards their camp.

Confused, still warm from the heat of his body against hers, and something like hurt sharp in her throat, she follows him.

* * *

Later, she reluctantly accepts some of the wisdom of what he said. They get caught in a skirmish on their way back to the Frostbacks, and she can’t stop thinking about their last kiss, the way his hand tangled in her hair, how he pulled her head back and skimmed his lips across the most sensitive part of her throat.

She doesn’t notice the assassin sneaking up behind her. She shifts out of the way, but not quickly enough. His blade scores deep into the back of her thigh, and they have to send her back to Skyhold on a horse to see a better healer than the one they have at camp.

The journey takes a week, and from the back of her horse, Halani has time to reflect. Solas is right. She doesn't have time for a distraction—no, addiction—right now. After everything is over, he might relent. And even if he never came to her bed, she marvels at (and worries about) the realization that she would not trade stolen kisses with him for a lifetime with anyone else. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m still unclear on the physics of the Fade step, but if it can be used outside of battle you can bet Solas would use it to escape an uncomfortable situation, ha.


	19. The Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote this so many times, because I couldn’t decide on how explicit it should be. I landed here, which felt right—hopefully not too disappointing. Thanks as always for reading!
> 
> Updates will be very quick now, since I’m finished with the rough draft of everything else. As much as I want to draw it out, I’m too eager to share my take on Trespasser with you!

They are lying together in her bed, Halani on one side and Solas on the other. Though he never touches her while they are in her chambers, and he never stays the night, he at least permits this closeness.

An empty bottle of wine sits at the fireplace, by the rug they had spent the evening conversing on.

She knows he will leave soon—in fact, she’s surprised he’s stayed this long. Her eyes are already half-closing from sleep, lulled by his warmth next to her and the three glasses of wine. She wonders if he will visit her in dreams tonight, to make up for his absence in bed. In the Fade, their kisses seem to last hours. As they embrace, it feels as if her being merges with his, and she wakes sated and well-rested. If not for the tension released by those moments, she suspects she would be pushing a little harder against Solas’s resolve in the waking world.

They have been lying in companionable silence for a while when Solas says abruptly: “We seem to be approaching the end of our battle against Corypheus.”

“You’re very good at pillow talk,” Halani laughs. Solas doesn’t smile back, only gazes at the ceiling, his brow furrowed in thought.

She sighs. “Yes, we are. As soon as Cullen gives the word, I suppose we’ll be marching to the Arbor Wilds. Hopefully our last march for a while.” _Whether we win or lose,_ she reflects, shivering, but doesn’t voice this thought.

“What if everything you loved about the world had to be destroyed in order for you to mend the Breach?”

“You mean like people?”

“Maybe, but I was thinking more—your favorite fruit, the way the sun rises, the sound of the wind when it passes through a forest.”

“What, like the entire world becomes the Hissing Wastes?”

He thinks for a moment. “Yes, exactly. Everything familiar and beloved to you would be gone, replaced by empty desert.”

“Well… I don’t know. Lives are more important, aren’t they? I think everyone would be satisfied to live in the Hissing Wastes, if the alternative was having the world overrun by demons.”

“What if they weren’t? There isn’t enough food or water in the desert. You’d save their lives from the Breach, only for them to face slow death by starvation and the ravages of the elements. Though your initial intentions were heroic, you would come to be despised as a villain.”

“I’m glad the wine got you in such good spirits,” she jokes, and looks over at him, trying to gauge his strange mood.

He smiles at her, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “What would you do, vhenan?”

“I suppose I would ask the people what they would prefer.”

“What if it was an equal division? Or more accurate to human nature: what if they wanted you to do it, but then changed their minds afterwards?”

“Well, then… Gods, I don’t know, Solas! Why do you ask?”

“Just… A thought exercise I ponder sometimes. I once saw something in the Fade…” 

She smiles and settles in for one of his stories, laying back down beside him, shifting closer in some instinct to ease the darkness she can sense roiling up within him. But he doesn’t continue.

She turns to him and is shocked to see that his eyes are glassy with unshed tears. 

Even after Wisdom died, she did not see him cry. Out of instinct, out of love, she moves to him, her hands seeking his face, her lips seeking his. She expects him to pull away, to reassert his careful boundary.

But—he pulls her to him and kisses her back. Roughly, desperately, his teeth clicking against hers. He lifts himself up and above her, and his hands move to her arms, pinning them down as if he doesn’t want to let her touch him.

“Solas…” Halani tries to move, to put her arms around him—but he holds them down more securely.

She bites his lip in protest, and he growls. He finally frees her, and Halani starts to pull off her breeches. Solas leans back, stilling her hands with his.

He looks down at her, and the muscles in his jaw tighten.

Halani sees herself as if from his eyes, sprawled in front of him, her face flushed and mouth red from kisses, her breeches halfway down her thighs. This was nothing like those moments in the Fade. She is in her body, every sensation exquisite, and he in his. She feels her heart pounding in her chest, the heat throbbing between her legs.

A look of agony passes over his face.

And he grabs the fabric of her breeches in both hands, and yanks them down in one decisive motion.

She fumbles to help him take them off, and her underclothes, and then her shirt. Breathless, still kissing him, she searches for his belt with her hands and undoes the clasp. Then traces her fingers lower, lower, till she places her palm flat against him. She shudders at what she feels there. He groans into her mouth, and she shudders again.

He leans back to take off his breeches, and she notices with a kind of wonder—and hunger—that his hands are shaking.

“Now your shirt,” she says, and her voice is a rough whisper.

She watches him do it, the muscles of his body gleaming in the firelight, freckles—gods, just as she had imagined—spanning across his chest.

Her gaze drifts lower, and—just as she had imagined—he is beautiful.

“Ar lath ma, vhenan,” she whispers, and pulls him to her. 

* * *

Afterwards, she holds him as he lies on top of her, his face buried in her neck, his breath slowing. Tears sting her eyes. She feels the beginning of a sob shuddering in her chest, and part of her marvels at it—the depth of this feeling, unlike anything she’d known before. Her hands trace across his back, the ridge of his shoulderblade, the line of his spine. The places where their skin touches is sticky with sweat and his seed. This was nothing, nothing like their embraces in the Fade. She tightens her arms around him, and savors his earthy smell, cedar and rosemary and woodsmoke. 

Solas pushes himself up above her, and gives her a lingering kiss. And when he pulls away, his eyes are shining with tears too, though none fall.

“In all of my life,” he whispers, “I never expected to find one such as you.”

He kisses her again, and she feels something shift inside of her—something coming to full bloom, painfully intense. Halani already knew that she loved him, but now it’s as if the ground has opened up beneath her. She looks into the depths of this bottomless chasm, and with a kind of fear, she realizes she will never be the same again.

* * *

For the first time, Solas stays the night. He holds her in his arms, his whole body pressed against her back. Halani thinks she might die of bliss.

And she hears him murmur: “The moon…”

“Mm?”

“In the Hissing Wastes. I’ve never seen it so beautiful anywhere else.”

She smiles at his poetry, his lovely inscrutability, and snuggles deeper into his embrace. But as happy as she is, she remembers his unshed tears after he asked that question. Is he worried about the Breach? What price does he think they will have to pay to win?

Halani wakes up cold, and without looking she knows he is gone.

She turns to the empty side of the bed, and in his place is a tiny blossom. It takes her a moment to place it: vandal aria.

Solas has always sent her coded messages like this, in lieu of sharing the secrets she knows he keeps. She suspects he left her that sprig of blood lotus at her door, long ago, after their first real conversation in Haven: a warning about the sacrifice ahead, which had proved true dozens of time over. Then, after their tense conversation about the terrible future she had seen at Redcliffe, the daggers he left as a half-apology.

Halani gently picks up the flower, and catches a whiff of its honey-and-cut-grass scent. Her breath catches, her throat hurting with grief.

Even after a night where she’s the closest she’s ever been to him—he slips away like a wounded animal, leaving flowers behind him like drops of blood.


	20. A Game of Cards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't kidding when I said I was impatient to publish the rest of the chapters! But I don't know, do you prefer it to come in measured installments? 
> 
> Here's a bit of a lighter chapter. I love Dorian so much.

Halani sits at a table with Dorian in the local tavern. They’ve stopped at a village on their way to the Arbor Wilds; the others are already sleeping at the inn across the street.

They’re playing a simple game of cards, but she can barely keep track of the rules. She lays a card down, hardly knowing which.

Dorian scoops it up, making a noise of disgust. He spreads his hand down on the table. “That’s three wins for me. Are you going to tell me what has you so preoccupied?”

“What do you mean?” Halani busies herself with taking a sip of her ale.

“Oh, please. You’re not the best at cards, but tonight you’re playing as poorly as Cassandra, which is no small feat. And,” he adds, “your face has been like a thundercloud all day. Granted, we are about the face off with the evil magister himself, but…”

His voice is mock-exasperated, teasing, but his eyes scan her face in real concern. And because of the ale, and her exhaustion, and the fact that she’s come to value Dorian as a dear friend—she decides to tell him.

“I’m in love with Solas.”

Dorian stares at her for a moment, eyes wide. And then he bursts out laughing.

“What’s so funny about that?”

Her voice is indignant, but she can’t help but smile. And then she begins to laugh, and once she starts she can’t stop.

“I know, I know,” she says, “it’s ridiculous.”

“Not altogether surprising though,” he says, his expression considering. “I’d heard some rumors, though I dismissed them. I gather it’s not one-sided?”

“No,” she sighs. “It’s not.”

“So what’s the problem? A couple of lonely, morose elves, finding love at the end of the world? Sounds like one of Varric’s stories to me.”

She smiles, but her throat hurts. She picks up the cards on the table and begins shuffling them, just to have something to do with her hands.

“I suppose he is a bit old for you, though,” Dorian adds with a mischievous grin.

Halani is grateful for the chance to laugh. “You sound like him. He’s not that much older, he just acts that way. The shaved head certainly doesn’t help.”

“How old is he anyway?”

“I… I don’t know, actually. I haven’t asked. But I’d imagine around ten years older than me.”

“Then what is it? His general atmosphere of gloom and doom? I for one can’t imagine dealing with that in bed.”

“Well, that’s just it. He won’t sleep with me.” _Besides the one time_ , but she doesn’t say it aloud. It doesn’t seem relevant, given that Solas seemed to immediately regret it, and it never happened again.

“Hmm,” Dorian says, thumbing the edges of his cards. “He doesn’t seem one to be too concerned with the physical world. But it’s more than that, I gather.”

“I just feel like… I don’t really have him. It’s not really about the sex. I know he loves me, but… It feels like he’s always on the verge of walking away.”

“I think I know what you mean.” Dorian’s gaze grows distant. “I had a friend when I was in school. Well, we started out as friends. And then it got… Complicated. I didn’t advertise my sexuality, but neither did I hide it. But he considered it an awful secret.” Dorian’s voice grows bitter. “Something to be ashamed of.”

“So he ended it?”

“That would have been easier. No, he carried on with me in secret. We loved each other. I’m certain I wasn’t deluded about that. But he was never willing to truly commit to me. To him, a future together was impossible. Eventually I realized it was worse to half-have him, than to not have him at all.”

Dorian takes a long swig from his mug, his gaze abstracted, lost in memory. “One day I decided I had enough, and ended it.”

Halani sits with that for a moment, and again her throat hurts with grief.

“I know it’s not the same,” Dorian says. “But…”

“No,” Halani interrupts. “It is very much the same. He’s not ashamed of me, but I think he’s ashamed he let it happen. Lets it continue.”

She saw it, after every kiss they had. A fleeting look of regret.

“And even if I’m not a secret, exactly—we try to be discrete, but I’m sure the others guess—he has so many secrets from _me_. And his regret... I know he doesn’t think he deserves happiness. But he won’t say why. Even though I know he loves me…” Her voice breaks, and tears sting her eyes. “He doesn’t trust me.”

Dorian reaches across the table for her hands, and holds them in his.

“But the thought of ending it is unbearable. When things are good, when we’re out on the road in the sunshine and just _talking_ , I look at him and think I’ve never been so happy in my life. And the future is so uncertain. Why not just seize whatever happiness we can, when we very well might die tomorrow?”

Dorian is silent for a moment, rubbing the backs of her hands soothingly with his thumbs. When she doesn’t continue, he snatches up his glass and raises it to her.

“Well, Inquisitor. I’ll gladly cheers to that.”

Halani laughs and wipes away her tears. She lifts her mug to his, and drinks it down until it’s gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanted to explore the dynamic between her and Solas a bit more, and show that she isn’t blind to how unhealthy it is. “When things are good…”—the classic justification for staying in a relationship where you’re constantly being abandoned.
> 
> Speaking of which—next chapter is Crestwood. :(
> 
> Again, lmk if you have any opinions about cadence! I could literally publish everything right now, but not sure if that would be weirdly unsatisfying for a reader.


	21. Crestwood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sigh.

Solas tells her to pack for a day’s journey, but doesn’t say where he is taking her. So Halani readies her travel gear, excited and, if she’s admitting it to herself, nervous. Solas is not impulsive, and despite her giddy hopes, the trip will probably be more serious than a romantic getaway. The Inquisition is still hard at work seeking Corypheus, and she knows he wouldn’t indulge a simple distraction.

They leave before dawn, just the two of them. Instead of heading down the eastern pass to the Hinterlands, they turn west. Halani studies his profile as they ride, but can read nothing in his expression.

Just as the sun is beginning to turn gold, midway down the sky, they arrive in the verdant forest of Crestwood, warm and balmy after the chill wind of the mountains. Solas eases his mount into a trot, and leads them through the trees. They arrive at the mouth of a grotto; Halani can hear the sound of a waterfall in the distance. They dismount, leaving their horses to graze, and Solas leads her in.

Two enormous harts carved from white stone face each other. Behind them, a stream trickles down into a pool. The ivy on the rocks, the leaves of the trees—it’s so green it hurts her eyes. It is darker here, with a strange mist. It is as if they have stepped into another world.

Solas turns to her, smiling at the look of awe on her face. “The veil is thin here. Can you feel it on your skin, tingling?”

She closes her eyes and breathes in the air, rich with the smell of growing things. There is no wind—everything is utterly still and quiet, save for the sound of the water. But she feels something moving across her skin, like the charge in the air during a thunderstorm, or when a spell crackles by her in the battlefield.

“Yes,” she breathes, opening her eyes. “I do.”

Solas takes her hands gently in his. “I was trying to determine some way to show you what you mean to me.”

“That’s not necessary, Solas. You’re my…” She struggles to find the word for it. _Vhenan_ suddenly seems indequate.

“That is the question, is it not?” 

He leads her down to the water, and gazes into the pool for a moment, as if struggling to speak.

“Solas, I know you love me.”

He looks up and smiles, but it is a sad smile. Dread begins to tighten her throat. Here it is, again—whatever secret it is that stands between him.

“Yes,” he says. “I do. And I decided the best gift I can offer is… The truth.”

Her heart starts racing. Will he finally tell her what he’s been hiding?

“You are unique,” he murmurs, and takes her hands again. “In all of Thedas I never expected to find someone who could draw my attention from the Fade. You have become important to me. More important than I could have imagined.”

“As you are to me,” Halani whispers.

“Then what I must tell you… the truth…”

“What is it?”

“Your face,” he says, his voice soft. “The vallaslin. In my journeys in the Fade, I have discovered what those marks mean.”

“They honor the elven gods,” Halani says, and she can’t keep the question from her voice.

“No. They are slave markings. Or at least, they were in the time of Arlathan.”

Halani touches her face. “But… we’ve always worn them to honor the gods.” She stares past Solas, to the statue of the hart behind him, wreathed in ivy. “Perhaps they meant something else long ago… but does it matter now?”

“That is a question for you to decide.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you like… I know a spell. I can remove the vallaslin.”

His eyes are full of compassion, and Halani has to look away. She can only see Keeper Deshanna, the beautiful green lines of Sylvaise traced on her kind face. The night her clan had finally voted to let her, an orphan of city elves, receive the vallaslin. The prick of the needle as the healer etched in the markings of Dirthamen on her cheeks, her forehead, her chin. How her heart raced from excitement, and how proud Enan was when she emerged from the tent, blood and ink on her face.

“This is all I have left of them,” Halani whispers. 

Solas squeezes her hands. “I know, vhenan. It is your choice.”

Halani looks up again at the statue of the hart. It is just like the ones they saw a week ago in the Arbor Wilds…Mythal’s Temple, a remnant of a lost world, overgrown with the advance of the forest, the mosaics on the walls faded and cracked. She remembers the ancient elven sentinels, how proud and noble they were. They were not underfed, like her clan, nor stooped with oppression like the city elves. 

She remembers how she lost her parents to a treatable disease, because the shemlen hoard their medicine and forbid the People from practicing magic. How, one year, human bandits raided their camp and took what little valuable possessions they had. They didn’t kill anyone, but little Evarel had gotten in the way of one of their horses. She remembers the sleepless vigil that night, as the healer prayed to the gods to save his life. And after he died, the sound of his parents weeping long until dawn.

Halani looks up at Solas, and his image is blurred with tears. “Our people vowed never to submit to slavery.”

He brings his hands to her face and wipes away her tears with his thumbs. “I am sorry for causing you pain. It was selfish of me. I look at you and see what you truly are. And you deserve better than what those cruel marks represent.”

Halani kisses him. Keeper Deshanna is gone. Enan is gone. Killed by the same humans that still oppress their kind. The same humans who erased their culture, so that all they had left were these sorry relics of a time when they were no better than Tevinter.

Halani pulls away, and looks into his eyes. And before she loses courage, she says: “We deserve to be free. So do it. Take the vallaslin away.”

Solas gestures her to sit at the edge of the pool. He kneels before her, and gently cups one side of her face with one hand, as he raises his right. It begins to spark with blue magic—she feels it tingle against her skin.

He looks at her in a wordless question, and she nods, closing her eyes in assent. She feels the magic move against the side of her face, growing colder and colder until it burns like ice.

She opens her eyes, and catches her breath at Solas’s expression. It is not glad, or pleased—it is so full of sorrow it hits her like a blow.

“You’re leaving me.” She only realizes it as she says it, and the shock of it leaves her whole body numb.

He goes utterly still, and the spell fades from his hand.

From the stricken look in his eyes she knows she is right.

She stands up, backing away from him.

“What secret are you keeping from me?” she asks, and her voice is nearly a whisper. “What is so awful that you cannot share it?”

His face looks very pale in the fading light. “I am sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

“Whatever it is, it’s _bullshit_. Whatever you’ve done that makes you think you don’t deserve happiness, that we can’t have a future together—it’s not true.”

“It is not as simple as that.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“I cannot.”

“You are a good person, Solas,” Halani says, her voice a fervent whisper. “Whatever secret you keep, I know this to be true.”

Solas looks at her for a long moment. She stares back, unblinking, willing him to stay, to not turn around and leave. His expression shifts, his lips part, his body turns towards her—

But then his spine straightens, as it always does. He clasps his hands behind his back.

“I will see you back at Skyhold.”

Oh gods, his voice. As detached as it ever was, those first days after the Breach, when they were strangers to one another.

After he leaves, she stands there, motionless, for a long while. The dusk fades into twilight, and she finds herself in darkness.

Halani doesn’t cry. That ability seems to have disappeared after the Arbor Wilds, and everything she had seen there. For once, her exhaustion and numbness are a relief. She realizes she’s here alone, with only her horse, and part of her is viciously glad that Solas was finally cruel in a tangible way, leaving her stranded alone in the godsforsaken woods.

The anger, indignation, gives her strength, and she walks out of the grotto to get her horse and find a place to camp. 

But there, standing at attention, are three scouts in Inquisition armor, each one of them elves.

One of them strikes her fist to her chest in a salute. “Inquisitor. We have prepared a camp nearby. Tomorrow we will escort you back to Skyhold.”

Halani is grateful that the dark hides her expression, and follows them to their camp.

Later, as they share dinner around the fire, she looks around at the faces of the scouts. And she realizes, with a sickening lurch, how she must look with her vallaslin gone.

Another sickening lurch: they are bare-faced, too, each one of them. She had assumed they were city-born, but now she remembers the skill with which they set up the camp, their obvious comfort in the wilderness. The lilt to their voices, so obvious now that she looks past their unmarked faces. Some Dalish lost their vallaslin for committing a grave offense, but all three of them?

Solas must have made them each an offer too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figure Solas must have his elven spies in the Inquisition set up by now—who else could he trust to handle this situation with discretion? And though his offer of the spell is meant as a special gesture of love, given his broader mission I figure she’s not the only one he offered it to by this point.
> 
> (Speaking of which, I never quite understood what will happen to the elves when he tears down the Veil. Will they survive? If not, it’s pretty bleak that he’s recruiting them all to work for him only for them to all perish when the Veil goes down.)


	22. After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve decided to publish the remaining chapters separately as oneshots, since I think they stand well on their own. Thank you so much for joining me on this angst-ridden journey—it was such a lovely reentry to writing fic after many years.
> 
> I tried publishing all of the oneshots just now, but having some trouble - feel free to subscribe to me or the series (Florae) if you want to get notifications when those are out!

When Halani returns to Skyhold and finally forces herself to look in a mirror, she discovers that her vallaslin isn’t gone after all. The left side of her face is bare, but the tracings of Dirthamen remain on the right.

With a feeling like nausea, she realizes it remains in the shape of Solas’s left hand, where he cradled her face as he did the spell, before she stopped him. She may not have lost her vallaslin, but now she is permanently marked by his touch.

Halani still hasn’t cried about what happened, and she won’t now—but she does spend the better part of an hour shoving her gigantic, floor-length mirror to the balcony and tipping it over the rail. She watches it drop until it’s just a speck against the snow, and feels foolish for expecting the catharsis of hearing it shatter.

Thankfully, Solas is not at Skyhold. She had overheard some scouts say that he’d joined a party to investigate the Arbor Wilds. Still, she studiously avoids the rotunda.

During that day’s meeting around the war table, she can tell the others are staring at her. But no one says a word. She can’t decide if she’s grateful or annoyed.

Varric is another story. When she sees him, without missing a beat, he quips, “What happened, Daggers? Scrub your face too hard?”

She can’t help but laugh at that, and some of the pain within her eases a bit.

That evening, as she picks at her food in the great hall, Dorian comes down from the library. She doesn’t know what he reads on her face besides the half-missing vallaslin, but without a word, he takes her by the arm and drags her to the tavern. He brings her up to the second floor, where no one can see them, and their voices will be masked by the music and conversation downstairs.

“I pushed my mirror off my balcony,” Halani says right as they sit down.

“You’re going to have to give me a little more context.”

She sighs and looks over Dorian’s shoulder; she can’t meet that sympathetic look in eyes or she might finally break.

“Solas ended it. It was exactly like we talked about before. He never really believed we could be together.”

“I am so sorry, my love.” Dorian takes her hands in his and squeezes them. “Is that why…” His eyes move over her face.

She pulls her hand away to touch her face, the same place Solas had touched her as he did the spell. “He told me that the vallislin were slave markings in the time of Arlathan. He thought to give me a gift, by taking them away. But I stopped him halfway through. I realized why he was doing it—that it was a farewell.”

“Vitus did the same, actually.”

“Vitus?”

“The friend I mentioned before. I ended it, but he saw it coming. I came home one day to a card on my bed. It had a poem, something about the full moon, the ships having to leave with the tide, et cetera. Rather cliché, to be honest.”

Dorian chuckles, and Halani musters a smile in response.

“Solas did the same thing. He’s always left me these messages. After we…” Her voice stops working; she clears her throat, and tries again. “After we slept together—the only time we did—I woke up to an empty bed and a _flower.”_ Saying it out loud, she has to laugh.

“A flower? Please, _please_ , tell me it wasn’t a rose.”

She’s truly laughing now, her shoulders shaking—if she won’t let herself cry, at least she can laugh. “No, he would never be so trite. Of course it was shrouded in symbolism that only he knew. Vandal aria… We had been talking about the Hissing Wastes.”

Dorian makes a face. “Sounds romantic.”

Halani has been watching the barkeep ascend the stairs with their drinks; she waits until he puts them on the table before she starts speaking.

“I know I should have seen it coming. I mean, I _did_ , from the beginning, just like we talked about before. I just wonder why he even bothered to try at all.” 

“Love is… complex. If it was anything like what I had with Vitus, he probably couldn’t make up his mind one way or another. But the thing is, if you have to convince them, then it’s already over.”

Halani picks up her drink and raises it to him. “Cheers to that.”

“It helps to remind yourself,” Dorian says. “That you are worth more than someone’s indecision. When I truly absorbed that, I got over him.”

“How long did it take?”

“To be honest,” Dorian replies with a rueful smile, “I probably wasn’t fully at peace with it until a year ago. But Halani—forgive me for sounding like one of those obnoxious old codgers forever dispensing advice—you are so young. This Breach business may have interrupted your life, but gods willing, it’ll begin again after this mess is over. Take it from an older, wiser man: the pain will pass. One day, you’ll look back and be grateful it happened at all. Heartbreak forces us to grow. And it doesn’t take away from the beauty of what you had.”

“You’re right,” Halani says, and part of her means it. A larger part of her is sure she will never be happy again. And a third part of her hates that she is moping like a child when the world is ending.

She is the Inquisitor, not an adolescent crying over her first heartbreak. The sooner she can put Solas from her mind, the better she will be able to fulfill her duties and defeat Corypheus.

“Well, I think I’ve used up my bit of old man wisdom for the night,” Dorian says, scooting his chair back.

Halani looks up at him, and realizes she has been staring at the table in silence for a very long time.

“Suffice to say,” Dorian says, “I am so very sorry. And I’m here for you whenever you need me.”

Dorian stands up, and walks around behind her chair. He squeezes her shoulders and places a kiss on top of her head, and she knows if she looks up at him she will weep.

As if reading her mind, he says, “Don’t feel ashamed of the grief, Halani. Sit with it for as long as you need.”

After Halani retires to her chamber, she thinks of how grateful she is for Dorian. And Cassandra, and Varric, and even Cullen and Leliana, as distant as they keep themselves. The Iron Bull, Blackwall, Sera, Cole, Scout Harding, and all of the others who risked their lives every day for their cause. She thinks back to the first day when she awoke after the explosion at the temple. How confused and lost she was, how much she had longed for home, Keeper Deshanna and her friend Enan.

She grieves them—especially now that they are truly gone—but she doesn’t wish for the past back anymore.

This is her home now. Not Skyhold, exactly, but the people that comprise it.

The Inquisition had changed her, and Solas was but one piece of that. She has found a new place in the world, and it doesn’t depend on him.

Brave thoughts, and all of them true. And yet, as she lies curled up in her bed, she finally allows the tears to come.

After she drifts into sleep, she dreams of a dark forest. In the distance, a wolf howls. Even in the dream she shivers at the grief in its sound. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can never decide if it’s better for the Inquisitor to keep or lose the vallislin, so I decided on something in-between.
> 
> While I love the tortured, life-shaking interpretation of their break-up, I also wanted to inject some balance. Like these two laughing about Solas leaving a flower. You know when you’re deep in some crazy relationship, and don’t even realize how ridiculous it is until you tell a friend what they did? Yeah. Solas is That Guy. 
> 
> Also, I realized when I was writing out the names of the companions that I’ve barely ever interacted with Vivienne and forgot to recruit her on my last playthrough. I really only enjoy interacting with Varric, Cassandra, and Dorian, and it probably shows in this fic lol.
> 
> Again, thanks for reading, and you can find the next three chapters published already in this series!
> 
> I also found some old outtakes from 2017 when I first started writing this fic, so subscribe to the series if you want to get notified when those come out!


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